[04] Elite: Mostly Harmless (5 page)

‘Nice hand then? Must be, to go in for almost an eagle.’

Harry lifted the corner of his cards, which were fanned out across the table in front of him. He tilted his head sideways so he could peek at their faces – though from the theatrical way he performed the action it was clear he knew perfectly well what he was holding.

‘But what if mine is better?’

Angel shrugged, trying to look nonchalant as she drained the last of her drink and placed it on the refill pad. The chip around her wrist vibrated violently and her heart leapt up into her mouth. Before she had time to connect her brain to her limbs and snatch the glass back off the pad, the display embedded in the centre of the table bleeped crossly and flashed up the message
“Transaction denied. Nil credit”
.

Angel blushed furiously as Harry and several of the other players sitting round the table sniggered. That was it. They knew she was broke. All Harry had to do was raise her one last time; she would have no choice but to take the dive because the bet console wouldn’t accept any more wagers from her. She was an idiot and she’d just thrown everything away.

‘Well, well,’ Harry beamed. ‘You appear to be in a bit of a predicament.’

He leant across in front of Angel and picked up her empty glass, replacing it gently on the refill pad as he stared at her, inches away from her nose. She pressed her cards defensively to her chest, not that it mattered if he saw now anyway. The NFC reader flashed the drink up to Harry’s account and he sat back in his seat still watching her with dancing eyes.

Eventually the one remaining player still in the game broke the silence.

‘Okay you two, get a room. But first can we finish this hand? We have a communications grid to service tonight.’

Harry looked across the table at the impatient player.

‘You’re right!’ he declared suddenly. ‘I call pledge! Let’s see what everyone’s got.’

He thumbed the console and the whole table drew in a sharp breath, looking at him with open mouths. Leading the slack-jawed parade was Angel herself. He hadn’t Jontied? They were all in for eight hundred and the round was over; the game was over, and Angel was sitting on a practically unbeatable hand against a  threeK pot. Harry sat grinning back at the table, some of whom were beginning to look very cross.

‘Are you some kind of jack-flapper? Why wouldn’t you raise? You know she can’t follow. You just threw away the chance to force her dive!’

Lee Hamerstein had slammed his cards face-down on the table and was leaning forward aggressively.

‘You got some kind of ‘thing’ going on here have you?’

Harry sat back, looking relaxed. He had the air of someone who was enjoying this a little too much.

‘A ‘thing’? A
thing
? Let me see… Do I have a
thing
about buying my friend a drink just before I take all of her, and your credits? Well yes, yes I think I do! Do I have a
thing
about seeing her suffer the indignity of taking a dive because she ran out of credits? No.’

‘And if her hand beats yours?’

The engineer glared at Harry who smiled back benignly.

‘It won’t. Have you seen her luck lately?’

Angel cleared her throat and the two men looked at her, waiting to see her cards. She was so bowled over by the lifeline she’d been thrown that she forgot to be wary of the growing tension on the other side of the table.

‘You might want to check your egos on a landing pad boys,’ she said nodding thanks to the waiter who switched her empty glass for a full one from the trolley hovering in front of him. She fanned out her cards on the table, revealing one, two, three and then pausing dramatically before showing her fourth Queen. Everyone’s eyes flicked across the cards, a murmur breaking out as they clocked the additional Queen in the Jonty.

‘Oh,’ said Harry sinking back into his seat with an air of defeat.

‘You IDIOT!’

The locals were getting angry now. Hamerstein flipped his hand over revealing four Aces. Amazing cards; but without an Ace in the Jonty hand it didn’t beat Angel’s Queens. All eyes turned to Harry. Angel’s heart was practically exploding, blood rushing loud in her ears.

‘You let her win!’

Three of the grease-stained labourers on the other side of the table had leapt to their feet now and Angel stood too, body tense. It looked like these grease-crawlers weren’t going to take the defeat lying down and Angel wasn’t entirely sure how many of the people from her side of the table would stand beside if it came to a fight.

‘Steady on fellas, he didn’t let me win. The cards are good. If I hadn’t accidentally put my glass on the refill pad we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.’

Two more of the locals stood to join the growing lynch mob facing her across the table and Angel started to feel very exposed. Then Harry and his med school friends all scraped their chairs back from the table and stood beside her, bringing the numbers to four on five; these were odds that gave Angel a little more hope of getting out alive. Maybe.

‘She’s right,’ Harry said.

Angel was momentarily surprised by how reasonable he sounded considering he was about to lose eight hundred creds.

‘I didn’t let her win.’

He threw his cards down on the table from behind her. Three landed face-up – all Kings – and one fell face-down. All eyes flew to the Jonty to confirm the King they had all known was in there. So far Harry’s hand put him in third place, but there was one card still to be revealed. Angel’s heart stopped trying to burst and decided to turn to stone instead. She jumped as Harry touched her shoulder lightly to move her aside, reaching to flip the last card over on the table.

‘Excuse me,’ his voice was tight and seemed teetering on the edge of laughter.

Flip.

A King.

Angel had a brief moment to savour the crushing weight of defeat as it fell on her from a very great height before she was fighting for her life in a mad scramble of greasy overalls and flying fists.

Chapter 5

‘Rose.’

Angel looked up; the guard beckoned her over to the holding cell door, gesturing for her to place her hand on the bio-scanner so he could punch in the release code. The pad went green and she was able to step through the glowing barrier with no more resistance than a slight tingle. Harry had followed her to the entrance and was hovering hopefully by the scanner.

‘I guess it pays to be the station commander’s brat. I don’t fancy pretty boy’s chances of getting out so quick though,’ the guard sneered through the force-field at Harry whose face fell with the realisation he was to be abandoned.

‘Can you call my mum for me, Angel?’ he shouted after her.

She felt a bit bad leaving him on his own but there wasn’t much she could do. His med school mates had fled the scene when it became clear that station enforcement would be called out to clean up the mess. Angel and Harry had been buried deep in a mob of angry grubbers at time so were unable to execute such a prudent strategy.

 She hobbled after the guard on one bootless foot.

‘Well, don’t you look a sight?’

It was Stewart Forgie, making good use of the station’s PR hush-budget to bail her out.

‘Where is your boot?’

Angel looked down at her mismatched feet and shrugged. As well as having a black eye and a fat lip she was starting to sober up; the beast of all three-day hangovers threatening to settle in if she didn’t get a drink inside her to take the edge off.

‘Well, you can’t go anywhere like this,’ he started shepherding her out of the detention centre where each weekend hundreds of over-exuberant revellers would be processed; fined and rudely sobered up. It smelt of bleach. The staff looked weary and disinterested as Stewart hurried Angel past under cover of an oversized hoodie. The detention centre was strategically located to rapidly evict hung-over revellers off the Observer, so it wasn’t long before they arrived at the shuttle bays. Angel slid down a chute into an executive pod with her father’s decal on the upholstery. She immediately began hunting for a drink.

Stewart slid in behind her and started buckling himself into a seat.

‘Forget it, this pod is dry. Just get into your harness because I told the pilot not to hang around.’

At that exact moment the boosters fired and the shuttle was blasted out of the launch tube into space. Angel was sent bouncing about the shuttle’s interior like a pong ball as gravity lifted abruptly.

‘Ow,’ she tried to shield her battered face as she ricocheted off the comms panel.

‘Yes sir?’

It was the pilot answering the buzz of her forehead connecting with the talk button.

‘Carry on Commander Sefton; we’re all good back here.’

Stewart muted the cabin mic and caught hold of the back of Angel’s jacket, yanking her down towards a seat until she was able to get one arm hooked into a harness and bring the rest of her limbs under control. The press officer looked at her, shaking his head.

‘What am I supposed to do with you? You look like a Diso cage-fighter, not the young lady of the station.’

Angel scratched her fuzzy scalp.
Incoming lecture; set neural pathways to ignore,
she thought darkly and tried to assess the damage of her recent bar-fight by her reflection in the shuttle window. Through the mirage of her pounded face she could see dozens of ships of various flavours zipping around in orbit. Frigates, couriers, transporters and cutters – some with the distinctive avian features of Imperial vessels, but mostly independents or the flat and muted designs of the Federation; traders and tycoons here to do business or take some R-and-R at one of the luxury Observer resorts. Her thoughts turned to getting back out on the interstellar highway as quickly as possible. But then something her addled mind had been doing its best to forget popped up; a memory from the card game earlier that day – or had it been yesterday? It didn’t really matter anyway because she was flat broke, maxed out on negative creds with a busted shield and no stock to sell. When her credit for next week’s berthing fee got rejected in six days her ship would be evicted, shield or no, and without any stock in her hold her reputation would fall sharply just for taking off. That would mean kissing goodbye to her pilot’s digs too. She was more than screwed; she was methane-vapour at a fire pit.

‘Angel?’

As she had wallowed in despair Stewart Forgie had continued speaking, mapping out his plan to get her back on the straight and narrow with the minimum negative publicity.

‘Sorry, missed that. What?’

‘I said you are lucky Captain Riley thinks so much of you as the investor has decided to go ahead based on his recommendation alone, despite the fact you missed your appointment yesterday afternoon and are in no fit state to go anywhere today.’

Yesterday afternoon? So, she had been in the detention centre overnight. She lifted up an arm to sniff her pit. She wrinkled her nose and Stewart sighed.

‘Yes, you smell like a stink-gland. We’ll get you back to your father’s chambers and you can take a shower and get some lunch. I’ll make sure no guests are invited into the family rooms until we’ve got you and your cage-fighter face out of the way.’

He pulled a tablet out of the arm of his chair and tapped the screen, passing the terminal over to Angel when he was done.

‘Your generous benefactor has offered to pay for your repairs, so please tap in to authorise them. Tomorrow morning we’ll get your cargo bay filled up and ship you out of Vespa-M4 before anyone can see you. The thuggery plastered all over your pretty face should be gone by the time you get back.’

Angel was about to argue; she wasn’t a piece of meat – although right now to be fair she did feel a little like tenderised beef. But metaphorically she certainly wasn’t and she hadn’t agreed to this high risk mission for some faceless capitalist.

But that nagging thought from earlier returned and insisted on laying her cards down on the table. It didn’t take long as she didn’t really have any. She either had to take the job, or sell what was left of her ship and move back in with her parents. No competition. Her mother was far more terrifying than crossing pirate infested space with a belly full of gold.

Chapter 6

As Angel marched through the passages and platforms of the space station heading towards the port she felt a bit weird. She was fully sober for the first time in three days; not even the trace of a hangover. Stewart and her mother had conspired to purge the family quarters of anything even remotely resembling alcohol the night before and she had been too battered and exhausted to head out in search of contraband. At one point her headache had got so bad she’d been tempted to try a sip of the large bottle of Amxitsa cologne left out on her dresser, but instead she’d showered and eaten a huge meal, then slept for fifteen hours straight. Her eye was still puffy and starting to turn yellow at the edges but the swollen lip was almost back to normal size with just a decorative scab over a blossoming rosy split. After a very cold shower to de-fuzz her brain Angel felt alert and, dare she say it, was beginning to feel an edge of positivity creeping back in.

Maybe she could turn this all around?

It was mid-morning and the bulk of the hubbub that marked the start of the day was over. Her boots clanked against the metal walkway as she strode through the corridor, holographic advertising boards oscillating in her peripheral vision left and right. They peddled the usual familiar promos; haulage spares from Logsdon Bruno, export accounting from Ian and Elliott Simpsoid and legal services courtesy of Giles, Purcell, Letham, Meyer and Watson. There was even a long running commercial for Hilditch Investigations, although the smiling portrait of the good detective Alec Hilditch made him look more like he was advertising toothpaste than private investigation services. Angel had always thought anyone with teeth that white couldn’t work under cover.

As space stations went, the Slough Orbital was fairly basic. It was an industrial outpost; the riveted plates and grills lining the chambers and tunnels gradually scabbing over with centuries of oily crud and smut. The flickering 3-D commercials espoused the virtues of the latest hardpoint mining laser or heavy-duty cargo extender. Graphite dust accumulated in every corner, rounding off the sharp edges of metallic construction with a greasy crust. There was little point in trying to fight the grime when your entire economy was based on the filthy business of hauling metal and rock.