Dark Sky (Keiko) (2 page)

Drift smiled ruefully and raised his glass to her. ‘As ready as I’ll ever be, I expect.’

The sentence was technically correct. It wasn’t his fault if this group of peacocks misread it as an admission of weakness.

They sat down and got back to their play. The big blind was posted by one of the other male players, a blond-haired fop barely into his twenties judging by appearances, and using a thin mesh vest to flaunt a physique surely created at the point where narcissism met art, or possibly surgery. The small blind fell to a stunningly beautiful woman in a cream dress which Drift recognised as a fabric that became more and more transparent as the owner’s heartbeat and body temperature rose. It was designed for the hedonistic club or party scene: wearing it to a poker table was an unsubtle statement of confidence in one’s own self-control.

Drift had lost some chips in their first session, but only one of their table had been in real trouble at the break. He was an athletically built man with a narrow moustache whom Drift guessed had Chinese ancestry, and who was the only other player at the table with clothes of similar quality to Drift’s own. His suit might have got him in past the door staff but it hadn’t garnered him any respect at this table, and nor had his playing style. He was overly conservative, bleeding chips and reluctant to take any form of risk. When he did go all-in, with a desperate bid to salvage his game, he ran a pair of tens into pocket jacks from the girl in the cream dress, who wiped him out and took his chips without her dress losing a shred of opacity. Drift wasn’t sorry to see him go: the man had a dangerous air which the rich kids around them seemed to have completely missed, and if he wasn’t something like a gangland enforcer blowing his pay then Ichabod Drift was a left-handed ham sandwich.

The next player to fall by the wayside was the girl in the straps, who watched Drift bluff his way to a couple of fairly small hands in quick succession with nothing cards and then went head-to-head with him as the others folded again, perhaps sensing a trap. This time Drift didn’t need to bluff, but made sure to chew the inside of his cheek in the exact same way as he had previously. She fell for it and saw her pair of fours from the table with an ace high get utterly trounced by the three fours Drift made using one of his hand cards. He didn’t get her completely, but her attempt to save herself in the next hand saw her lose her few remaining chips to a bald man with a narrow goatee who was wearing some modern-fashion interpretation of a twenty-first or twenty-second century military uniform, chewing some form of dried meat and smoking a genuine, hideous-smelling cigar.

The well-muscled young fop bled himself slowly dry with poorly thought-out risks, and left muttering dire imprecations at somebody. The third woman in the group, a plump blonde with a dazzling smile and pleasing cleavage, or possibly the other way around, coolly eliminated a genial old man shortly afterwards. He’d been paying too much attention to her low-cut dress of midnight purple, and the tiny lights like distant fireflies that crawled all over it but seemed to pool most often over her breasts. Drift had no doubts at all as to how coincidental that particular detail was.

‘Will you at least let me buy you a drink for a game well played?’ the man she’d eliminated huffed jovially, heaving himself to his feet. He spoke Russian, as had most of them during the game, but Drift heard him in English thanks to the commpiece in his left ear, which provided an almost instant translation in its pleasant, neutral tone via the translation function on his pad.

‘You already have,’ his conqueror replied, gesturing to her pile of chips, and that was that.

They took another short break at that point, which Drift used to visit the nearest bathroom. He was making his way back when the last of their group of players, an androgynous youth of few words, fell in beside him before he’d even realised they were there. Their hair was an artfully asymmetrical mess of lengths and colours ranging from pure white to the darkest violet imaginable, and they wore a forest green sarong with what looked to be a deliberately shapeless sleeveless black top. It was probably in fashion.

‘So,’ they began, too casually, ‘whose feathers have you ruffled?’

Drift frowned sideways at them. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Someone’s taken an interest in you,’ his opponent said mildly. ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed?’

‘This is a pretty poor psychological game,’ Drift snorted. ‘Worried about your chances?’

‘I’ve seen at least two security watching you,’ they told him, carelessly flicking a strand of hair back from their face, ‘and someone else who I’m sure is one of the House’s plain-clothes people. You’ve attracted someone’s attention.’

‘The only thing I attract is the ladies,’ Drift replied with mock politeness, ‘but thanks for your concern.’

‘Don’t sell yourself short,’ the other player said with a faint smile, before leaving his side to resume their seat at the table. Drift returned to his own place, but despite his best efforts he couldn’t completely shake what they’d said. He made a pretence of looking around to see where the bald man in the pseudo-military uniform had got to, but in reality he was checking out the location and numbers of the nearest of the Grand House’s floor staff. He saw nothing untoward, but when he turned back to the table the youth was smiling at him.

Damn it.

Play restarted and Drift made an effort to resume his tipsy act, but his heart wasn’t in it. He told himself that it would be less believable now anyway given that he’d played astutely enough to avoid elimination so far, but he still would have preferred some sort of additional bluff between him and his opponents. The fact was that he was undeniably distracted by what he’d just been told, even though there was no reason for him to be. He hadn’t broken any laws here, he wasn’t trying to game the casino and he wasn’t wanted in Red Star space, so far as he was aware. Unfortunately you couldn’t skate as close to the edge of legality as he habitually did without getting a bit paranoid about the authorities, and someone had found a way to play on that.

Well, at least the game wouldn’t be boring.

He got back into the swing of things by eliminating the blonde woman with the lights on her dress, who was aiming for two pairs with her pocket queens and the two eights on the table, but fell foul of Drift’s pocket threes that allowed him to snatch a full house. The youth in the sarong followed not long after, when their queen-high clubs flush lost out by the narrowest of margins to the cigar-smoker’s king-high. That left Drift, the bald man with the cigar (now on at least his third) and the woman in the cream dress.

It was, on the face of it, a fairly even match-up: each of them had around fifteen grand in their stack, although the automated reading on the table showed that Drift was slightly ahead of both his competitors. However, the cigar-smoker seemed as implacable as a concrete wall, and the woman in the cream dress hadn’t allowed her apparel to grow the faintest bit translucent throughout the game’s duration. This was purely a hobby for each of them, he suspected, and the stakes weren’t enough to make them blink. For Drift, on the other hand, a potential win of over 40,000 stars was enough to make him start sweating.

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.

‘Mother
fucker
! 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.’

‘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.