Star Risk - 04 The Dog From Hell (12 page)

The speedster came off the ground, went vertical, and drove upward.

That caused the day's only civilian casualty�incinerating an old man who came to the park every day to leer at the young girls playing handball on nearby courts.

Goodnight ignored both the babble of questions from the four fliers and his own extreme hunger pangs from the body energy his extended bester state had burned.

He wheezed in air, slumped down into an acceleration couch, and hoped he still had enough in his savings to at least pay off these fliers.

"I think," he finally managed, "I could have done with another rehearsal when I planned this operation."

Then he wondered what the hell he was going to do next.

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EIGHTEEN � ^ � Friedrich von Baldur swore under his breath.

They had him cold.

And it was his own damned fault.

There were four of them, and they were all pros.

Now, if he hadn't had the hubris to suggest to Laurence Chambers that he had a big enough name to draw people to Chambers's planetoid who'd be interested in bringing von Baldur down, and would bring the credits to play with�

But he had.

He also should have allowed Cerberus Systems the blatant unprofessionalism of still wanting von Baldur's ass on toast�

But he hadn't.

The tournament was called, simply, The First Annual Von Baldur Stud Poker Tourney, and the players did, indeed, materialize.

Among them were these four particular professionals, quite illegally and unethically teamed.

They'd laid low through the preliminary rounds, then begun their play.

The four were the main card man, a scholarly looking, meek-sounding sort; his secret partner, an exceedingly handsome woman; the lookout; and a cover, who unobtrusively wandered around, pretending slight drunkenness and casing the other players and their hands when he could. It was a winning combination.

Von Baldur should know�he'd used similar tactics himself.

Of course they had signals.

When Friedrich had his suspicions, he put holo crews, shooting from the Eye In The Sky�the ceiling watch chamber that every casino has had since time immemorial�and screened, centimeter by centimeter, the footage.

But the team was good�Friedrich wasn't able to translate nor even identify their sign language, so he couldn't put pit bosses on the alert to pitch them out of the tournament.

The team was also well-covered�the main player was sponsored by another gambling world, so they couldn't just bar him from the tournament without any better cause than that he was winning.

Von Baldur had their rooms searched.

They almost looked innocent. But looking back at the entries on their passport fiches showed too-remarkable sets of coincidence, and all four of them had recently "happened" to "pass through" Alegria IV, which Freddie remembered as Cerberus's headquarters.

He added one and a hypothesis and got two�plus a bad case of the sweats.

The team did increasingly well as the tournament progressed, and von Baldur did not. He was paying too much attention to the Cerberus operatives, even though they weren't playing against him yet, and not enough to the immediate competition.

Finally he forced himself to concentrate on the business at hand.

That put him in the finals along with, unfortunately, the two Cerberus players, plus two other sharpies.

One of the sharpies was just lucky, the other was plain good. Friedrich, had he been able, might have admitted that the woman was as good as he was.

But he couldn't, of course.

He told Chambers what was going on, and Laurence glowered at him.

"For Chrissakes, Mital�I mean Freddie. We have ways of dealing with things like that."

Von Baldur nodded reluctantly. He would rather have cleaned Cerberus's clock honestly.

But he reminded himself it wasn't how you played the game, but whether you won or lost.

Single deck "shoes" were used to deal the cards in the tournament.

They were rigged by Chambers's people.

But the rigging somehow went wrong, and the team did even better than before.

Chambers couldn't figure out what the matter was.

Von Baldur could.

Cerberus had more money than Chambers, so the makers of the shoes would have provided the security company with rigging methods Chambers, and von Baldur, knew nothing about.

Von Baldur had watchers, with binocs, in the Eye, and a tiny buzzer in his groin to signal what cards were held.

But the Cerberus team covered their hands most carefully.

The final round was reached deep in the night, and went for almost twelve hours.

The game was table stakes, so the players had almost all their money on the table.

It made a considerable pot�von Baldur thought it would be well over a million credits, about a third of which was his, winnings that had been sucked away in the course of play.

When the last card was drawn, von Baldur had a straight to the ten.

The lucky player had folded on the third card.

The Scholar had a pair of fours and queens showing, and had been betting like he wanted everyone to believe he had a third queen in the hole. Von Baldur thought he was bluffing.

His secret partner, who von Baldur thought of as the Beauty Queen, had four hearts. Probably a bluff, since there were three other hearts in other hands around the table.

The other woman had a pair of threes and a nothing card showing, and von Baldur couldn't figure what in the hole.

There were raises and counterraises, and finally von Baldur called.

The woman with the threes folded. She'd been bluffing, and was beat on the table.

The Scholar matched the call, as did the Beauty Queen.

Von Baldur, not sure, turned over his cards.

The Scholar sighed, smiled falsely, and turned his cards facedown. He also had been bluffing.

For an instant, von Baldur thought he'd won.

Then the Beauty Queen turned over the fifth heart, and her flush ended the tournament.

Von Baldur was wiped out.

Chambers wouldn't stake him from scratch. At least, not the size of the stake he'd need for a fresh start.

He managed a courteous smile, and stood back from the table.

Cerberus, once again, had gotten him�and, he realized, they would continue to pursue him to the grave.

Which, the way things were going, might not be that distant.

Friedrich managed politeness while his guts churned.

What in the seventh circle of hell was he going to do now?

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NINETEEN � ^ � M'chel Kiss sat on a float in one of her island's lagoons, glooming gently, and trying to keep from jeering at herself.

It was not so long ago that she'd been carefully husbanding tenth-credit coins, wondering where dinner would be coming from, and desperate for any job.

Now�

She looked at the path leading from the lagoon to her main house. Whoever'd developed the island had done so with skill, taste, and subtlety.

Human signs of development barely showed.

But, even though she couldn't see or hear anything, she imagined her com buzzing, buzzing, buzzing. She'd had to hire an answering service back in the capital to handle the calls.

Lollypop may have been an obnoxious client whom M'chel cordially loathed, but she and Music Associates had evidently been singing Riss's virtues to the heavens.

Now, every half-witted celebrity on Trimalchio IV not only had to have a bodyguard, but it had to be M'chel Riss, whether they were threatened or not.

Three holo shows had wanted to do features on her, and had only been dissuaded by threats of violence.

But the calls persisted.

She didn't want to take any of them, having had her fingers burned to the elbows with her one contract. But on the other hand, it was work. High-paying work. Safe, high-paying work.

She considered the com from Jasmine.

Part of her really wanted to hare off on this Grand Quest to Shaft Cerberus, although King hadn't yet defined what they'd do or how they'd do it. All she had was her and Grok's feelings that Cerberus was somehow in over its head.

Not enough.

Not to mention that it would involve real danger.

Her adrenaline count was nice and low these days, thank you.

On the other hand, maybe she should just take off, hunt down Redon Spada, her sometimes lover, and see what trouble the mad pilot was getting into these days.

That would not only be dangerous, but who knew if there was any money there?

More sensible to go play with Jasmine, Grok, and maybe the other two former members of Star Risk.

She snorted, brought her thinking back from romantic realms.

She�and the others�had gotten their asses on toast the last time around, and that wasn't even going directly against the huge security firm.

A woman could get killed messing with them again.

She heard a whisper, looked up.

High overhead a couple of ships were sporting about. Idly she decided that both of them were identical attack craft, probably Alliance.

She wondered what the interstellar government was doing on Trimalchio, yawned, and considered her already perfect tan.

The whisper from above got louder.

The two ships were flying in a tight pair, in a near-vertical dive.

M'chel frowned. She wasn't fond of the sounds of war when she was at rest.

Especially from a couple of flyboys showing off.

The ships were getting closer�she guessed only a couple of thousand meters above her.

Sometimes M'chel wished that Trimalchio had a few more laws, about things like noise pollution or hazardous flying over a populated area.

But�

Her thoughts broke off as she realized the ships were still closing.

Riss swore, vowing she'd notify whoever was the local Alliance muckety about his goddamned cowboys, if they didn't pull out in the next few�

Riss saw bomb bay doors open on the ships, and reflexively rolled off the float and underwater.

She surfaced, head close to the float, and saw bombs fall out of their bays, toward the island�goddamnit, her island.

The ships pulled out, and Riss saw, with a chill, that neither of them had any hull numbers or any other marking, and the ships themselves were anodized a shiny, searchlight-reflecting, probably radar-absorbing black.

Then the bombs slammed in, and trees and bits of what had been her house pinwheeled up.

The ships banked back.

Riss didn't know whether to get out of the water, knowing how water carried shock effect, or stay where she was, hoping the next set of bombs would also strike land.

They did, and Riss saw more of her real estate get shredded.

The ships came back a third time, very low, and autocannon roared.

Then the ships climbed, at full drive, for space.

Riss found herself standing on the float, shouting up at the attackers as they vanished.

Smoke and flame rose from the shore.

M'chel found tears runnelling down.

She knew, goddamnit, oh, she knew the attack wasn't a mistake, and who was behind it.

Cerberus, of course.

The bastards wouldn't leave her alone until�

She didn't allow the thought to complete itself.

A bit of doggerel ran through her head, written by an ancient Earth outlaw:

I've labored long and hard for bread, For honor and for riches, But on my coms too long you've tread You fine-haired sons of bitches�

"Just frigging so," she said aloud. If they wouldn't leave her alone, then their asses were up for grabs.

She dove off the float and swam toward shore, wondering if her little lifter had survived or if there was an intact com to get transportation to the mainland and a spaceport.

Jasmine King might be a little surprised at the com she was going to get.

A bit of her mind was still trying to recall what had happened to that Old Earth robber.

Had he been hanged, or drawn and quartered, or electrified, or�

Something unpleasant, she was sure.

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TWENTY � ^ � Surprisingly, it was Goodnight who first started to bring some sort of order to a very joyous, if a little paranoiac, reunion.

The five had filtered back onto Trimalchio IV, and been shuttled by one of M'chel's friends to an out-of-the-way conference center on one of its moons.

"Awright, awright, settle down," he growled. "We're all glad to see each other and all of that. Pour drinks, siddown, and let's figure out what we're going to do next."

"If anything," Riss added.

The other four obeyed.

Grok presented the situation on Alsaoud, and his and King's belief that there had to be a profit hiding in the confused system for the giant security company to get involved.

When he finished, he looked at Riss.

"It is for you, M'chel, to take us the next step.

"I think."

Riss half smiled.

"First," she said, "it's agreed that all of us would like to break it off in Cerberus, right?"

"That's maybe not the way to put it," Goodnight said. "The question seems to have become do any of us have any sort of choice against taking on Cerberus?"

"Sorry, Chas," M'chel said. "I was starting too deep into things. Let's take up Goodnight's question.

"Do any of us have any sort of choice?

"I don't," she went on. "I'd taken my lumps and was quietly going about my living and the bastards shot up my home.

"I got the idea they aren't gonna let me alone. Not unless I go dirt farming and marry some clodheel or something. But for sure get out of any kind of adventuring."

"That's one," Jasmine tabulated. "If I may speak for us, Grok?"

"You may."

"I could say that we could continue on our merry way, but we haven't come up against Cerberus, one way or another, and don't know if they've got us on their, uh�"

"�shit list," Goodnight said.