Planet Hustlers: Mission 15 (Black Ocean) Read online

  Carl put a finger to her lips. “I’ll explain it all. But I don’t want to have this argument twice. Let’s get the crew up and hash this out.”

  # # #

  “A poker game,” Carl announced.

  The common room lay silent in the echoes of his proclamation. Looking around, he saw stares ranging from blank to dumbfounded. It was, to put it mildly, a less enthusiastic response than he’d hoped for.

  “How’s a poker game gonna fix anything?” Roddy asked over an early breakfast beer.

  “It’s a human tradition,” Shoni stated authoritatively. She sat tall in her seat at the kitchen table, showing no signs of being worse for getting up pre-dawn ship time. “Poker originated as a gambling game wherein the stakes were whatever the participants could agree upon. Often played among outlaws in free-land expansionist times, parcels of land were often included in higher stakes games including claims to mineral deposits.”

  Amy pulled Carl aside. “You woke everyone up for this?”

  Carl didn’t let her sidetrack him from the bigger picture. “OK. You’re skeptics. I can respect that. But the problem with negotiations is that we can’t offer anything valuable enough to get the players to switch up planets. We need the Poet Fleet away from New Garrelon. They need the Ruckers off Carousel. But that leaves three factions, including the stuunji, and just two planets.”

  “Maybe musical chairs would be the game to play, then,” Yomin suggested. From behind drooping eyelids, her voice oozed skepticism.

  Archie digitally cleared his throat. “There is no established tradition of wagering on musical chairs. The rule system is kludgy, and control of the music is too subject to tampering.”

  Yomin bonked the robot atop the head with her coffee mug.

  “All right,” Roddy said, indulging Carl for the moment. “Say we do get Tanny and this pirate admiral to agree to a game. What happens when one of them wins? They own both planets. That doesn’t get us anywhere.”

  “We could have a stuunji play on behalf of our planet,” Rai Kub suggested. “My people have developed a number of excellent players since adopting the game.”

  Carl wiped a hand over his face to hide his grin at the notion. “No offense, big guy, but this game is gonna require a buy-in. I don’t think the pirates are going to let you bet your own planet since they’ve already got it.”

  “That’s what I was assuming you have planned,” Yomin argued. “This had a ‘selling water to the fish’ vibe to it from the get go.”

  This was it. He’d been waiting for this setup. Carl stuffed his hands in his jacket and looked as smug as he could. “Nah. I’m gonna put up Ithaca as my stake.”

  The room erupted.

  “The hell you thinking?” Amy asked.

  “Chuck stole Ithaca from us,” Yomin added.

  “Why would you inform yet more people where the Odysseus is located?” Shoni asked.

  Rai Kub sounded eager. “Would the pirates or Ruckers accept?”

  “This seems an unwise course, even by our meager standards,” Archie commented.

  Roddy cleared his throat and pounded his beer can as a gavel to get everyone’s attention. “Is anyone going to mention that Carl’s shit at poker?”

  Carl scrunched up his face. There was that. “It’s not that I’m bad at poker. I’m just… unmotivated. I think with a planet on the line I can get my act together. After all, I’m hoping to get Tanny and this pirate admiral at the table. If nothing else, Tanny’s worse at poker than me. You can read her face like a datapad.”

  “And if this Chisholm character is an ace?” Amy asked, crossing her arms. “What do we do if she cleans both of you out and walks away with everything?”

  Carl shrugged. “Then we prevail on her better nature—and the fact that three planets would be spreading herself dangerously thin—and ask nicely for New Garrelon back. Hell, we might even go in on a scam from the outset to arrange it.”

  Roddy coughed mid-sip. “Yeah, cuz pirates would never double-cross us.”

  “Double-, triple-, quadruple-cross… who cares?” Carl said. “Leave that math to me.”

  “Speaking of math,” Shoni said. “Maybe I can give you a tutorial on the probabilities involved.”

  For a moment, the idea of sending Shoni into the game crossed Carl’s mind. But she was a one-plan laaku. She’d either win or lose. When the losing stared her in the face, she wouldn’t have the library of cheats, cons, and misdirections to fall back on like Carl had.

  “I’ll think about it. But fundamentally, poker is a people game, not a card game.” In the pause that followed, Carl added, “And you know me. I’m a people person.”

  # # #

  Though she rarely used it, Tanny had an office. All alone, with the lights turned down, she posed in front of the comm terminal and examined the preview image. The woman staring back at her was a stranger.

  Had she really changed so much? Carl seemed to think so.

  Black hair fell to her shoulders, limp and slick. Eyes sank beneath her brow. Her whole face had lost muscle definition, displaying cheekbones that had previously been lost beneath flesh.

  Still, for the first time since she could recall, she was healthy. One injection a day of a neurochemical blocker to combat withdrawal yearnings and she was fine. Heart, lungs, liver, pancreas, all new, expensive, and functioning perfectly.

  Money couldn’t buy happiness, but it could buy health.

  To anyone who didn’t know her, Tanny would appear menacing and powerful. Anyone who didn’t know better. At least, that’s what she hoped.

  The comm ID was already keyed in. Taking a breath to steel jittery nerves, Tanny reminded herself that she was the one with the leverage.

  She connected the comm.

  A face appeared, recognized though far from familiar. Emily Chisholm was perhaps five or ten years Tanny’s elder but kept herself in remarkable shape. High cheekbones, smooth skin, hair pulled back into an unseen braid behind her. Narrow eyes bored into the screen through a pair of delicate wire-rimmed glasses.

  “I presume you are calling because we received the same message from Ramsey,” Chisholm said without preamble.

  “Were you even remotely considering it?” Tanny asked. She couldn’t say how seriously she had. Carl was a puzzle, even after all the years she’d known him. The only thread she clung to in weighing the benefits of the ludicrous proposal was that Carl’s plans went so easily to shit.

  “I consider everything,” Chisholm replied with that snooty, feigned accent. Not one human grew up speaking that way in a thousand years. Like everything else about the Poet Fleet, it was an affectation.

  Tanny hated phonies.

  “I had hoped,” Chisholm added. “That you might lend insight into the veracity of his claims.”

  “Fifty percent of Ithaca sounds like something he’d cut a deal with his dad over,” Tanny admitted. “Carl’s never been big on staying in one place, but Chuck Ramsey’s past the age where he should be gallivanting around the galaxy. Giving up half the moon in return for not having to run it sounds like Carl’s M.O.”

  “And the rest?” Chisholm pressed. “Am I to believe this data—without verifiable coordinates—is all true?”

  “When would he have had time to cook it all up?” Tanny asked. “You only parked in orbit of New Garrelon a few days ago. Data like that would take months to gather and just as long to fake.”

  “You must realize my biggest concern.”

  Tanny scoffed. “Carl and I are barely on speaking terms. He kept me on pharma for years, even after I divorced him, so I wouldn’t leave him. We have mutual friends, and my father still likes him for some fucking reason. Other than that, I’d have nothing to do with him.”

  “Do you buy his argument that Ithaca is worth more than Carousel or New Garrelon?” Chisholm asked.

  “What do I look like, a real estate lawyer?” Tanny said. “Hire your own assessor.”

  “That’s precisely why I suspect the data
to have been invented. The value of even half of Ithaca is astronomical. Of course, it’s the other half that Ramsey owns.”

  They’re both Ramsey, you dim bitch. “Minerals, exotic plant and animal life, alien architecture. Place has a lot going for it if you’re willing to invest in the infrastructure. The biggest factor, though, is that ARGO doesn’t know it’s there.”

  “But you do.”

  Tanny glowered. She wanted to sigh, roll her eyes, or make some juvenile, dramatic gesture. But her father had coached her before allowing her off on her own. It was different being the boss than being a partner or an underling. Lashing out at petty sniping like Chisholm’s was beneath her.

  “Yeah. I do. I wouldn’t put too much planning into the place, though. Either this cockamamie scheme of Ramsey’s comes to nothing, or I end up walking away with half of Ithaca. I really don’t see how you could win.”

  Chisholm’s red painted lip curled at the corner. “I fancy myself something of a card player. What sort of pirate would I be, otherwise?”

  Tanny forced her eyes not to roll. If it weren’t for their ships and the amount of killing they did, the Poet Fleet would have been a bunch of costumed wannabe pirates. But they did attack ships for plunder, and they did kill people. That just made them annoying pirates. It would have been like Tanny walking around in her marine dress uniform seven years after mustering out.

  “Poker is a family tradition,” Tanny said with a forced smile. “I’d put up anyone on my payroll against anyone on yours. It’d be nice to get New Garrelon in the deal, even if I don’t care much about exile planets in the EADZ. It’d be just one more thing to take away from you.”

  Chisholm’s eyebrows raised. “Oh? Now that you mention things being taken away, I believe I am in possession of an old friend of yours.”

  This is business. This is not personal. Esper was a friend. Now she works for a rival. If Esper had wanted to come aboard the Rucker Syndicate, all she needed to do was say the word. She chose her side. She chose to stay with Carl. That was her call. Tanny couldn’t afford to let Chisholm rile her.

  “You lay a hand on her, I put a contract out on you that’ll get even Convocation exterminators interested.”

  “Oh, my!” Chisholm replied without a hint of fear. “I wouldn’t dream of harming dear little Esper. But it’s far too late not to lay hands upon her. I’ve laid just about everything upon her. Lips, tongue, fingers, why… I haven’t the time to list everything. Your young friend is quite energetic.”

  Tanny smirked. “Overplayed that one a bit. Esper was a priestess. Never met a girl with more starch in her panties. She’d blush watching The Sarah Brown Affair.” It was true. Tanny had caught her blushing when Sarah and her beau touched hands during the nighttime beach walk scene.

  Chisholm’s lips pursed. Her uniformed shoulders jiggled with suppressed laughter. “Your Seeker friend seems a bit looser than when you knew her. Seekers, if they are devout, will try nearly anything once. And if they like it, they’re welcome to try it again, and again, and—”

  Tanny shut off the terminal.

  She’d gotten what she needed from that comm. Admiral Chisholm was just toying with her now. Breaking the comm early was a sign of weakness, but she’d have looked weaker still if she’d let loose an outburst she’d felt brewing inside.

  What business was it of hers if Esper decided to hop the fence? Even Tanny had to admit that the admiral was an attractive woman. That was merely being objective. No. It rankled her that Chisholm had Esper, not that the two of them had fooled around—even if it were true in the first place, which Tanny still doubted.

  Carl’s plan of a high-stakes poker game was idiotic. But maybe Tanny could make use of it to get Esper away from that woman and add another planet to her burgeoning empire at the same time. Maybe even add two.

  # # #

  In the finest quarters of the finest ship in the finest pirate fleet this side of ARGO space, two women sat in a standoff. One wore the snug, prim, tidy uniform of a self-styled admiral. The other wore a pink sweatshirt with her hands tucked into the front pocket. The former stood by the inert comm panel she’d just turned off. The latter watched from the couch.

  “I did my part and stayed out of it,” Esper said.

  Emily unbuttoned the collar of her uniform but left the garment on. She plucked one of the few remaining chocolates to have survived Esper’s massacre and popped it into her mouth, speaking as she chewed. “This whole business puts me off. I feel I’m being fed to the green-eyed monster even as it mocks me.”

  Esper smiled. “You’re more eloquent with your clothes on.”

  Emily’s expression soured. “We play the roles we’re given, and the costume makes the role. Still, it stands that I am betwixt two lovers. One baits the trap, the other set to spring it.”

  “Oh, those two are way past their lovers’ way. Trust me,” Esper said, reaching for a bonbon of her own.

  There was no way to adequately convey the enmity between those two. It was more inexplicable than what had drawn them together in the first place. At least hot blood could excuse some aspects of that ill-fated romance. Opposites attracted, but Carl and Tanny were less opposite than offset by a perpendicular angle.

  “Trust you? Really? Those words fell from your mouth with not a hint of irony or self-awareness. What do you even see when you look in a mirror?”

  Esper looked up into the overhead canopy. It reminded her of the Mobius common room, except nicer. The brown and blue bale of hay in the cosmos spun syrupy slow above them.

  “What do you see?” Esper asked in reply. “A woman of education and breeding? A temptress and keeper of private whores? A bloodthirsty conqueror of less advanced worlds?”

  Emily snorted. “Those stuunji had a stolen cruiser more advanced than anything I possess. Had they not fled, I’d have considered rechristening it my flagship. Smaller, certainly, but I imagine that Harmony Bay built in quite the amenities.”

  “Nah, this place is a lot nicer,” Esper said. “I was there on board when we took it. That was us, if you don’t recall. Carl made a broadcast and everything. It’s fancy but in a sciencey way.”

  “I suppose that since you’re a wizard now, you find science distasteful.” Emily didn’t even try to hide the bitterness of that revelation.

  “I have a new appreciation of the old. You really shouldn’t take it so hard. You might have gotten outplayed by Tanny and then me, but you sure put one over on those poor stuunji up there.” She pointed through the overhead glass.

  “I’ve no desire to be a tyrant,” Emily argued. “We’ll take our due from these stuunji, but they’ll have protection as well. They could have done worse than come under our control.”

  “Like their own?” Esper ventured.

  “Hah! Love might conquer all, but those rhinos will get conquered by every stray faction looking for a place to hide from ARGO. It’s a miracle they stayed independent so long.”

  “But you’d take a better offer if it came up?”

  Emily regarded her, the light catching the lenses of her glasses and giving her an inhuman appearance. Esper couldn’t look her in the eye. “You’re still angling for me to engage in that charade of a card game.”

  “Carl’s going to lose,” Esper said.

  “What’s that?”

  “He’s going in knowing he’ll lose. You said yourself, even half of Ithaca is worth more to you than New Garrelon. Carl doesn’t need to win. He just needs to shift ownership of New Garrelon back to the stuunji.”

  “Why not trade it, then?” Emily asked with a shrewd gleam as she peered over the top of her glasses. “Why the carnival?”

  Esper closed her eyes and sighed. “Do you see a person wise in their own eyes? There is more hope for the fool than for them. Sorry, I don’t know a lot of poems. Just Proverbs.”

  “You think he’s making a mistake,” Emily concluded. “You think he’s risking losing everything in the hope of coming out ahead.”


  “Our last time on Carousel, we were going to upgrade the Mobius, but Carl lost the upgrade fund playing poker. We wouldn’t have gotten off the planet if he hadn’t paid the fuel guy in advance.”

  Emily tapped a painted fingernail against her lips and paced.

  “You’re not going to get the Ruckers off Carousel on your own,” Esper added. “Ithaca’s a step up financially, maybe, but you’d still have to deal with only owning half of it. Chuck Ramsey has the other half, and he’s tighter with Don Rucker than Tanny is.”

  “So… you’re advising me to take my chances on the hope that Carl Ramsey either loses as much as he expects or more?” Emily asked, folding her arms and casting a condescending look.

  Why did it have to be like this? They were pirates, and Emily was just another version with perfect skin and lips that tasted like strawberries. Why couldn’t they have been smelly, slovenly, gun-waving psychopaths? Why did she have to make it so damned hard to hate them?

  And Emily… why wouldn’t she just play along and let Carl scheme her into a better situation without all this hassle? Suspicion, suspicion, suspicion. Motives, motives, motives. And the betrayals and backstabbing. Couldn’t forget the double-crosses.

  “No,” Esper said through gritted teeth. “I’m advising you to play the fun game where you might win a planet or two instead of the one neither of us will enjoy that involves me hollowing out your brain like a Halloween pumpkin.”

  For a silent moment, Emily stood glaring in Esper’s direction. Her chest rose and fell, rose and fell. It was almost hypnotic. There was a distant chuckle that sounded suspiciously like Mort.

  “I daresay I liked you better before I knew you were a wizard,” Emily said stiffly.

  “I could make you forget the last half hour ever happened,” Esper promised, deadpan. It was sorely tempting. She could go in and try erasing little bits and pieces, crawling through Emily’s mind like a mechanic looking for misfit parts.

  Mechanics did that sort of thing.

  But she couldn’t have brought herself to. The look of stifled horror in Emily’s eyes, hidden behind a mask of anger and annoyance, told Esper what she would be if that was the sort of way she liked her bedmates.