Balance of Terror (14 page)

“This is you trying to be noble again, isn’t it?” she interrupted. “You were like that on the
Differential
as well.”

Was he? He stared at her, bemused.

“Well, I didn’t stand for it before and I’m not standing for it now, Srin Flerovs. We’re in this together, right to the end, bitter or sweet.”

They were brave words, but he heard the catch in her voice. He also knew that getting to his feet to embrace her was probably exactly the wrong thing to do. She needed to feel that she was a strong person. And she was. Srin watched in amazement over the past month, as his beloved took to the life of arms dealer assistant. She learnt how to drive a tank, could navigate in the featureless deserts of Marentim and had become used to a range of living rituals that were as far from her previous existence as his homeworld of Tonia III was to him now. And she had done all of this for the both of them.

He held his hands up in mock surrender. “Whatever you say.”

Moon began pacing again. “We have to get to 3 Enkil IV somehow. That’s the only place where I can get in touch with Kad again. Maybe then I can find a way to short-circuit this wild galactic tour he’s got us on.” The tone of Moon’s voice boded ill for Kad Minslok when she finally caught up with him. “But, until then, we’re stuck in this rut.”

“Do you know where this spaceport is?”

Wordlessly, Moon shook her head.

“What about asking Gauder to contact Kad for us? There must be some channel to your friend right here on Marentim. There has to be.”

“I’ve tried to get him talking about that a couple of times,” Moon answered, “but he changes the subject quicker than a Vansat chameleon changes its skin pattern. For all his brashness, there’s a brain under Gauder’s thick skull. He knows how to keep his mouth shut.”

“So we just have to hope that he’s leading us in the right direction and not taking us round and round in circles as part of his unpaid labour entourage?”

Moon compressed her lips. “That’s part of what I hate. The fact that
both
options are plausible.”

The following afternoon, Moon and Srin visited the extensive gambling den at Kushin Meet. In the desert winds, the walls and ceilings flapped and billowed, resembling the inhalations and exhalations of some giant beast. With a swallow, and a look of firm resolve, Moon got their two kilo-credits changed to gaming chips and they began walking the floor. At regular intervals, scaffolding had been erected, and tribesmen with long-barrelled, lethal-looking rifles patrolled the narrow platforms, watching the action below them with cold eyes.

The game Srin chose to play was based on betting what number or symbol a spinning wheel would stop on. He played the good-natured beginner, trying his best to understand the rules.

“So you can bet on either symbols or the numbers? Really? You don’t have to bet on just one value? Or blue or white? I see. How interesting.”

He latched on to an older man who appeared to be well-known to the staff and other gamblers.

“So what are you betting on? Blue? Can I put one bet down with you? Oh, but just to be fair, I should put something down on the other colour too, shouldn’t I?”

The game, he told Moon before they approached the table, had been simple. By watching how much energy the person spinning the wheel was putting into the task, and the wheel’s initial position, Srin could calculate where the wheel would stop. It also helped that people could still place bets after the wheel had been set spinning. Ostensibly, Moon was there to be his “lucky charm”. She held onto his arm in the pose of a woman who had claimed possession of a promising gambler, but was really leaning on him for support. Despite Srin’s assurances, what they were doing was risky. What if Srin lost everything? If they reached this promised spaceport that Kad told them about, their transport would be expecting money for their passage. What were they going to do then?

A small cheer pulled her back to the gambling table. Both Srin and his mentor had won and they were now discussing what to bet on next. In this way, over the space of about a dozen turns, both men built up some small but steady gains.

There was a small scuffle when Srin ‘accidentally’ moved his and his companion’s chips to an adjacent symbol from the one originally agreed on. The local started raising a fuss, Srin was apologising profusely, the person spinning the wheel smirked but – as the ball was about to fall into a pocket – refused to let the bets revert. Moon watched the wheel carefully and breathed out a sigh of relief when it stopped on the symbol that Srin had accidentally chosen. All at once, their fellow gambler’s demeanour changed.

“It must have been the fate of the gods,” he laughed.

Srin pocketed the winnings – eight kilo-credits – and turned from the table. “I think I need a drink,” he said loudly to Moon. “Maybe two.”

“What are you doing?” Moon whispered as they walked away. “Just one more and we could have left.”

“They were getting suspicious,” Srin replied. “Didn’t you see the replacement spinner waiting behind the table?”

She was just being greedy, she knew. Eight kilo-credits was four times what they’d walked into the gambling den with. Together with their accumulated winnings, the total they’d made so far came to twelve kilo-credits.

“We can go now,” she said.

Srin grinned at her. “Just one more. I haven’t had this much fun in a while.”

They settled at a corner of the tent that resembled a bar and Srin ordered a flask of the local spirit.

“They were trying to figure out how I did it,” he remarked, “but they couldn’t. This entire casino is blanketed with sensors, programmed to pick up any device that can be used to manipulate a game.”

“How do you know?”

“Didn’t I ever mention my dissolute youth?” he countered with a large smile. “That, and putting two and two together. Like why the guards on the platforms are using mechanical rifles rather than superior electronic equipment. It’s because their advanced weapons won’t work here. Too much jamming.”

“Oh. And what do we do now?”

“We enjoy our drinks, while I try to give a good impression of getting drunk. Later, you try to leave but I start arguing with you. You realise that the only way to get me out of here is to place one last bet, but you have to make it a big one. Say, half our entire stash. I argue and give you a number. You deduct ten from that number and bet on the result.”

“Just like that?”

“That’s the easy bit. The difficult part comes when we try to cash it in.”

Moon’s eyes widened. “What do you mean?”

“Nobody likes to lose a hundred and two kilo-credits, especially when they’re usually the winners.”

“They’ll stop us?”

“They’ll try to, but if we play our roles straight, we should be okay.”

“Should?”

Srin laughed. “You’re looking tense, all of a sudden. Here, have a drink.”

Moon didn’t have to try hard to feign irritation. After all they’d been through, were they going to end up buried in the dirt on some desert planet with small hard projectiles riddling their bodies, courtesy of some local gaming bosses? Meanwhile, Srin appeared to be having the time of his life, getting rowdier with each drink. By the time he winked at her to indicate that they should move on to the next part of their plan, she was well and truly ready to leave all of Kushin Meet in the dust.

“We’re going,” she said firmly, lifting one of his arms and draping it across her shoulders.

“Just one more,” he begged, and she swore his voice slurred a little. Was this an act or was he really drunk?

“No, we’re getting out of this place.”

“C’mon, stop spoiling my fun!”

In stops and starts, Srin led her to the nearest table that hosted a spinning game.

“I swear,” he told her, fumbling for the ledge to help support his weight. “One more, that’s all I’m asking for. Just one, then I’ll walk out the door with you.”

Moon made a show of refusing, giving Srin some time to watch the current spinner and see how much energy she was using on each turn. After a couple of turns had passed, she sighed dramatically.

“All right. But give me the money,” she demanded.

“Put it on thirty-four,” he told her, handing her the money, just as the spinner put the wheel in motion. “That’s my favourite number.”

“Well it’s not mine,” Moon retorted. She threw down a handful of chips. “Six kilo-credits. On
twenty
-four.”

The spinner looked unsure. “Twenty-four?” she queried.

“That’s what I said. My friend is about to learn the lesson of easy come, easy go.”

The spinner nodded, the bets were locked in and Moon tried to look nonchalant while she watched the wheel, not sure whether she wanted to win or lose. Her heart felt lodged in her throat.

“Thirty-four,” Srin muttered next to her, loud enough for the gamblers beside them to hear. He sounded genuinely angry. “I said
thirty
-four.”

The wheel slowed, moved to a number, appeared about to move beyond it, then slipped back. Under the shiny marker was number twenty-four.

“That’s six kilo-credits on twenty-four,” the spinner announced.

“Um, what were the odds?” Moon asked belatedly.

“Sixteen to one.”

Sixteen! She had just netted them ninety-six kilo-credits. The blood drained from her face.

“Would you care to place another bet?” the spinner asked, her voice full of encouragement.

Moon violently shook her head. “No, certainly not. I shouldn’t have even made
this
one.” The last sentence slipped out, startling Moon with its truth. Now, all she and Srin had to do was get out of there.

Chapter Eleven

Moon took her winnings from the table and added it to the chips already in her pouch.

“C’mon,” she told a staggering Srin, “let’s get home.”

They were watched as she manoeuvred the both of them to the cashier’s booth. Moon knew it, could feel several searing gazes tracking their progress, trying to trip them up.

“Nice winnings,” the cashier said from inside his barred cage.

“Beginner’s luck,” Moon replied, trying not to look around.

“How do you want this?”

Keeping more than a hundred kilo-credits on one disc was asking for trouble. Moon did some swift division in her head. “Split it up. Six discs.”

“I’ll need to deduct fifty credits per disc. Standard policy.”

Charging fifty credits to set up one credit disc was extortion, but Moon knew she didn’t have a choice. “Fine.”

It took another five minutes for the cashier to initialise and load up all six discs.

“Sure you don’t want to continue your lucky streak?” he suggested, sliding the small tokens across to her.

Moon picked them up, slid three into a pocket sewn into Srin’s undershirt, then did the same for herself. “I’m sure.”

Her feet were trembling when they exited the den. Dusk was about to fall, which meant that Gauder would be preparing the tanks for departure…and no doubt impatiently waiting for them to return.

“Follow me,” Srin whispered.

Subtly leading her, he guided her through the market, making abrupt turns between tents while surreptitiously looking behind them. It was a slow-motion version of the chase on Slater’s End, where they had evaded the Space Fleet soldiers guarding them and scurried underground, down into the extensive tunnelling system beneath the city, in order to avoid capture.

At one point, Srin turned down an alley of cramped darkening tents, pulled them deep into a shop selling animal hides and navigation units, then slipped out through a small flap in the back when the merchant wasn’t looking.

“Now we head back to Gauder,” Srin said at a more normal volume.

They quickened their steps.

Moon was never so glad to see the two dust-streaked tanks as she was when they entered the transport holding area. There may have been more modern flitters and even some larger shuttles, but the solidity of Gauder’s transports reassured her.

With barely an acknowledgement, she walked over to ‘her’ tank. Gauder was carrying out some last-minute checks, and she knew from the pattern it made on his small data pad that he was tabulating fuel usage.

“Ready to roll?” she asked him briskly, stopping by the frontmost loop of treads.

Gauder started in obvious surprise. “Keen, ain’t yer?”

“Are we ready?” she repeated. On the other side of the tank, she heard Srin climb up into the passenger side of the cabin.

He grinned. “Had enough of the Meet, have yer? Righto then, lady scientist, whatever yer say.”

Moon hoisted herself up the tank’s front cabin ladder, pausing only for a moment when she reached the top. “Let’s go then.”