Warzone: Nemesis: A Novel of Mars (52 page)

“Nice. Thanks for the head’s up.”

“You’re welcome. I must confess the story of the cowboy who wears six guns over his space suit was larger than life. Now that I’ve met you, the image has been replaced by the man.”

“And you’re still interested?”

“Yes, I guess I still am.”

It was turning cold, so she wrapped up in the blanket. We stayed close to the fire and talked all night. Sunrise was beautiful and peaceful. Gone were the fiery skies of last night, yielding to the softer colors of the early morning. The light yellow sun started to emerge on the horizon, coaxing the sky to start to turn blue. The clouds that did appear were few and far between, but they were beginning to turn white with the rising of the sun. The morning was awakening with the sounds of birds and animals beginning to stir.

We packed up all of our stuff onto my bike, and then took one last drink of our canteens before leaving. Breakfast would have to wait until we got back.

“You never showed me any shooting. How do I know if you’re a real cowboy or not unless you show me some shooting?”

I dared not miss. This would break the spell cast by our perfect evening. I was accustomed to shooting in a different gravity, temperature, and atmospheric density than this. It was a good thing I shot off a couple of boxes of rounds on Earth a couple of weeks ago. Anyway, she did say she was able to accept the man over the larger than life image she once had, so I could risk failing. I pointed at her aluminum disc shaped canteen. “That will do. Throw it about twenty yards out and about twenty yards up, flat side facing me.” She smiled, and tossed it up pretty close to where I asked her to, and I drew both pistols and put two holes in the canteen. I was relieved, and she was elated. She retrieved the canteen, now leaking two streams of water.

“I promise to keep it as a reminder of our date. You are a real cowboy! Maybe you can buy a ranch and raise cattle and horses when you come back for me.”

“Nothing would please me more, milady.” We arrived back at the academy at ten hundred. Breakfast was over in the officers’ mess, but we grabbed a bite at the bar in the officers’ club. After lunch, Katya excused herself to go back to her quarters and change but promised to meet me in fifteen minutes at my quarters.

Upon returning to my quarters, I had a video conference request from my XO. I made the connection, and I saw his smiling face on the video screen.

“Greetings, Colonel.”

“Greetings. Is my post still standing?”

“Sir, yes sir. Are you coming back?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Rumor has it that you’ve taken up with a blonde-haired beauty, and may stay on Earth. In fact, a certain unnamed captain is giving odds on just that.”

“What are the odds?”

“It started out four-to-one that you were coming back. Then someone got a picture of said beauty and posted it on the bulletin board. The odds dropped to two-to-one that you would remain.”

“And what do you think?”

“I may just be a full-bird colonel soon.”

“Well, don’t count your eagles before they’re hatched. I’m packing now.”

“Very good, sir.”

“I’m bringing back two marines with me.”

“Good. So, you traded one sailor for two marines. I would have held out for three.”

I didn’t want to ruin it for him. “I’ll tell you the whole story when I get back. Is that it?”

“That’s all I got, sir. Have a nice trip.”

“Thank you. Kahless out.”

Katya knocked lightly on my door. She’d taken the day off as a personal day and volunteered to help me pack. After packing, we picked Blaze up from the vet. She had been treated
gently
for ticks and fleas. She was pregnant, and special care had been taken to treat her. Her bedding and bed were destroyed and replaced, and my quarters fumigated. Regulations didn’t allow an animal to board a ship for points abroad without being certified free of ticks and fleas. I got her certification papers from the Academy vet and cleared her to board. We ate a late lunch at the officers’ club. Blaze and I were ready to board and arrived at the launch pad at fourteen hundred.

Katya and I shared our first goodbye kiss. She handed me a chain and pendant. It was a broken heart with the words… “Mizpah. May the Lord watch between me and thee whenever we’re absent one from another.” She pulled the other half of the pendant and necklace out from under her shirt to show me she held the other half. I held her hand and our fingers entwined.

“When did you buy this?”

“The day after our fencing match. The Academy has a post exchange with a small jewelry counter,” her voice as thin as a whisper. A single tear streamed down her cheek, and I wiped it away with my shaking hand. I felt a wave of emotion wash over me. I kissed her goodbye for the last time, reluctantly released her hand and called Blaze to heel. We boarded, and I watched Katya on the launch pad until we were commanded to strap down for lift-off.

THE MARATHON POKER GAME

I met the transport freighter with my dog and two transfers, but my heart I left behind. We were on the short end of Mars orbit in relation to Earth’s location in its orbit around the sun, but not quite as short as on our trip here. It was planned that way to make my time away from the post shorter. Since my course was plotted and I was committed, I decided to settle down to the three and one-half month trip back to Mars. We play a lot of poker, and everyone reads everyone else’s books on the way back, which made for a lighter travel bag. There were a lot of videotapes in the transport freighter’s archive to help us pass the time. There was the inevitable Russian language class to keep us busy. The gerbil gym was only large enough for one person at a time, and we had assigned times in rotation. Sleeping arrangements are the same as a submarine, three men per bed, eight hour shifts in rotation. We had Internet access for APO e-mails and news, so we never lost contact with our country, or our post.

Blaze fared well and had six pups, six weeks into the trip to Mars. This caused no little stir. All of her pups were spoken for within hours. CPT Ripsnort wanted a pup but conceded it wouldn’t be fair to the dog, being cooped up on a transport freighter in space.

Two and a half months into our trip, CPT Ripsnort got a communiqué from the transport freighter
America
. Very rarely do transport freighters pass each other and the captains and passengers take advantage of it by having a marathon poker game. Usually it lasts for about twenty-four hours, providing there’s no ranking field commander in a hurry to get home.
America
locked its docking clamps to our transport freighter and CPT America, his crew and passengers came aboard. Two field commanders were on this flight, Titan’s commander COL Ice Man and me. Ice Man, the former first officer from Europa, was the one the ASDC sent back to dig back in after COL Tkachenko nearly destroyed the post on Titan. He was as tenacious a fighter and leader as they came. CPT Ripsnort pulled the two of us aside to see if we’d approve the time delay.

“I’m looking forward to cleaning COL Kahless out,” announced COL Ice Man, eyes boring into me like a drill as if it were personal.

“I don’t have twenty-four hours. Raise the table stakes and the raise limit and make it twelve hours. You can lose a war in twelve hours.”

CPT Ripsnort was undaunted. “Okay, gentlemen, it costs two thousand dollars to play. We start six to a table and play until that table is down to one man. Then when all the winners of the tables are ready, we play one last table until there’s only one player left, winner take all. You won’t be allowed any additional money to gamble with. When you’re broke, you are eliminated. COL Kahless informs me he’s in a hurry, so the opening bids are fifty dollars and raise limits are fifty dollars. If we run out of time in the final elimination, we will raise both limits again. There will be no cheating and no hard feelings. Anybody breaking these rules will be ejected from an airlock.” He paused for effect. “Just kidding. But let’s have fun, and keep in mind, with only one winner, the odds are that you’ll lose. If you can’t take that, don’t play.”

There were a total of twenty-four men playing today: flight mechanics, crewmembers and captains of the transport freighters, recruits, seasoned pilots, and two field commanders. Both 2LT Pale Rider and CPT Luv2bomb were in, as well as COL Ice Man and me.

I went back to my flight bag and pulled out my leather banker’s cap, white shirt and armband. I may not win, but I was dressed for the part. That put me on a different table from COL Ice Man and that came with the added benefit of him not being able to put me out early. Heck, I may even not survive the first table. I may never play him at all. Both of us had fought Tkachenko and neither of us had beaten him down. I think that he wanted to beat me to prove he was the better man. We played my table for a grueling four and a half hours. I lost some, won some, going back and forth until finally one by one, players on my table were eliminated. First CPL Good Wrench, the tank mechanic from Titan, then CPT Luv2bomb, then CPT Ripsnort, and his chief mechanic, SGT Grease Monkey.

Finally, it was down to 2LT Pale Rider, 2LT Warthog and me. It went back and forth for a while, and my sniper lost on a bluff. Three hands later I got lucky with a flush to 2LT Warthog’s three kings. I’d won round one and left the room for a short walk to stretch my legs, and brewed myself a strong cup of tea. An hour later the other three tables were done, and we were down to four players. COL Ice Man had survived and was pleased I had, too. The other two winners were CPT America of the transport freighter
America
and CPL NutzNWrenches, a tank mechanic from Europa.

COL Ice Man looked at me and smiled a big, toothy grin. “Finally we play!”

“So it would seem. It is a good thing there’s a wager limit, I’d hate to send you back to Earth without a shirt!”

“I assure you, I have a spare shirt. Let’s play.”

Three more hours passed before we eliminated another player. CPT America left in good spirits, glad to have lasted so long. CPL NutzNWrenches was an excellent poker player, who seemed able to alternately bluff us and then come back with good hands. COL Ice Man had the best poker face I’d ever seen: his eyes revealed nothing, and he didn’t seem to have any “tells.”

Two more hours later, we were at a turning point. COL Ice Man was dealing. I kept three cards, all hearts. He dealt me back two nines, which matched my nine of hearts. I’d amassed a great deal of cash up to this point and lost to COL Ice Man’s full house, but CPL NutzNWrenches wagered his way out of the game on a pair of tens. Now it was just COL Ice Man and me.

We played for another hour, going back and forth, back and forth. Since I was already overdue for my bunk rotation when the game started, I was hoping it would soon end. Even though I was getting sleepy, I refused to throw in the towel. It was my deal—I gave him five cards; he gave me four back and kept one. After reviewing the hand I had dealt myself, I was beginning to think this was the last hand. I kept two, both of them kings, dealt myself three cards more, and then four to him. Carefully I turned up the corners of my three new cards, an ace and two more kings. Four kings! My heart was beating like a drum, and it took all of my discipline to try to mask my body language so as not to betray my good hand. I’ve never in all the years I’ve played gotten four of anything, and the single ace I held meant he couldn’t have four aces. It was unlikely he would have a straight flush or royal flush. If he had a real good hand, then I could make him bet the full amount so I could clean him out. Looking at our piles of chips, I couldn’t tell who had the most. The piles looked the same.

“Let’s start wrapping this up,” said COL Ice Man.

I peered over my cards. “What do you have in mind?”

“No limit.”

I could feel my grip tighten on him, like the coils of an anaconda. With my four kings I could clean him out. “Okay, no limit.”

“Good!”

Mostly up to now the average winner of a hand had been one pair, two pair or three of a kind and that was with several players. It was common in a two-player hand to win with one or two pairs.

COL Ice Man counted out his chips and pushed them forward. “I raise five thousand dollars.”

“I see your raise and I raise you ten thousand dollars.”

COL Ice Man shoved all of his remaining chips forward. “Count them.”

I counted eight thousand nine hundred and seventy-five dollars. I counted my own and I was fifty dollars short of meeting it. I suddenly realized my error in agreeing to no limit! If I didn’t have as much as he did, he could wager me off the table. I looked up and knew that I’d been outfoxed. He must have been keeping track of his chips. His weren’t all stacked up and mine were. No doubt about it; he knew what he was doing.

“I guess you’ve beaten me.”

“Not yet, you can still meet my raise,” he said, smiling with a crocodile smile.

“It is against the rules to bring in more money.”

“It’s not about money. There are no rules about adding the assignment papers of your new sniper.” He gave me a smug look, and I wanted to clean him out more than anything. I considered my four kings and realized that this young sniper was probably going to make the difference in the balance of power with the Soviets on Mars. Only two hands could beat mine, and it was highly unlikely he had either. There was one more thing. If I broke the promise to the young sniper, word would get around the ASDC that I was not to be trusted, and it would be difficult to recruit the caliber of men I was used to getting. I hated doing this, but I had no choice.