Chapter 5:
Clara stood at a table, watching the players at her table with an eagle eye. She knew that many thought she was just lucky, but the truth was—she was skilled. Body language and facial expressions were the best thing a carder could learn. Every creature that sat at her table had a tell. All of them. She could read excitement in something as simple as a drawn breath or the slight tensing of a finger. She let her eyes drift across the group casually, but there was nothing casual about any of her observations.
The human with the expensive suit and the Crag both had hands they thought could take the pot. The Borgite had already counted the cards and folded. The Habbin was sweaty and gross, but that was more due to its genetics than the game. However, the fast opening and closing of the gills at the base of its neck told a story that said nerves and a clear bluff.
So the human and Crag. She eyed them both. The human added a pile of credits to the table, a slight grin teasing is lips upward just a hair. The Crag didn’t move a muscle. Then it too added credits. Clara considered the cards in her hand. She had a four-eyed king, a double jack, and a high queen. She could draw two and hope for the best or fold and let those two battle it out. Either way, the table took five percent of the credits in the pile.
Clara couldn’t afford to take a five percent pot and then split it with Renall. She had her mother’s passage to pay before the body smugglers who’d bought her from serio-max would even consider sending her onward. Renall had refused to pay that. He’d simply said he had gotten her out and she already owed him for that.
Her anger was still simmering, even after the scan call that had let her see her mother and know for sure she was safe and sound, at least for now.
The Borgite lit a smoke stick. The acrid odor hit the already heavy air. The vents above Clara’s head whirred and clicked, endlessly cycling the air inside the hall. Air was not free on Orbitary; every creature there paid a surcharge to the committee to keep the air circulators, designed to take up as little of the atmospheric air and oxygen as possible, running. Everything on Orbital was about credits and the need to preserve the planet, which took a lot of credits and patience. Clara liked that the air was fresh and clean in the early mornings, but not so thrilled by the fact that, at the end of a night, the air had become thin and practically unbreathable. She longed to dash outside, under the vast arch of the heavens, and drag air into her lungs in great gulps.
The music pounded along. Girls, most human, danced and shimmied to the heavy electro-beat. The crowd was a mesh of aliens and humans. Business was good, and so were the tips flying at the girls via the interface kiosks that allowed the crowd to give credits to the girls via a system that utilized the numbers each girl wore pinned to their skimpy costumes.
The whirr of credits hitting and the click of the tethers that held girls to the stage meant a purchase had been completed and the Gurley had agreed to the customer. Clara wasn’t crazy about the prostitution going on around her, but she had to admit that she did applaud Renall’s decision to enforce the rule that the Gurley had to agree to the sale before the tether would release her.
The human’s pinkie twitched, just a fraction. Anyone else might have missed that nearly imperceptible motion. She didn’t. He was holding a hand that he wasn’t sure of. She drew two and tossed two. Now she held a ten, and a six. Nothing, in other words. She fought back a smile. Her eyes flicked up at the two still in and then quickly looked down. She shoved credits into the pot, still smiling and trying not to.
The human twitched, harder that time. The Borgite looked bored, his fingers tapping the tabletop. The Habbin grunted out. “I won the last hand. I won’t win this one.” He tossed his cards to the table, face down. Now it was just Clara and the human. He shifted. His eyes went to the credit. Clara said, “Oh. Well then.” Her hand hovered over the credits beside her. “House calls the right to raise the stakes.”
The man facing her swallowed. His eyes went to his hand, a sure sign that he was worried about what was in hers. He shifted. A bead of sweat appeared at his temple. He gulped out. “By how much?”
“Two thousand credits.”
It was a bold move. One that would screw her if he caught onto her bluff. She had been deliberate about hiding her joy at the fresh draw, but what if he considered the situation and decided she was not only bluffing, but to call her on it?
She’d lose, big, and she’d piss Renall off and end up with a cut of exactly nothing for a twelve-hour shift. The Habbin leaned close. The Borgite even managed to evince a little interest. The man facing her gnawed at his bottom lip, the stress clearly getting at him now.
Come on,Clara thought.Fold or go. I’ll keep upping it until you call or fold.Her face betrayed nothing. The man twitched a final time. His cards hit the table, face down. He said, “I fold.”
Clara smiled at him and laid her cards down on the table, starting with the king. The man looked paler as each card hit. Clara held her final card and then laid it down. The Habbin released a phlegmy howl of laughter. The Borgite smiled. The man leaped to his feet. His voice shook with rage. “You goddamn bitch! You bluffed me!”
“It’s all part of cards,” the Habbin said in a genial tone, but there was a lethal current flowing across the table now. “Don’t be a sore loser. It’s not polite.”
The man glared at Clara. She stared right back at him refusing to drop her eyes. Bluffing was what she had done, and it was indeed all part and parcel of the game.
Renall’s voice cut in. “Well-played game, all of you. Dealer, clear your table.”
Clara gathered credit chips with steady fingers. The man, sensing he was outnumbered, began a slow retreat. The Habbin and Borgite wandered to the stage to ogle the goods on display. Renall hit a button and the walls, transparent but solid and strong as steel, that made up her cage, descended and the table began to lower until they came to a rest below the gambling floor and on the Lower.
Renall waited until she gathered her credits to raise the walls and step out. He spoke curtly, “That is all. Table up.”
She stepped out quickly. The table slid upward, ready for a fresh dealer and set of players.
Renall eyed her. He was angry, and it showed in the way his lips had gone flat and his eyes narrow. He said, “That was too risky.”
“I had him. I obviously did, as he folded.”
Renall’s long hand yanked through his hair. “You could have cost me a lot of credits.”
Her chin came up. “But I didn’t.”
His chin came out. His eyes flared darker. His nostrils quivered. “I don’t care that you didn’t. Play a safer bet.”
“Then I’d run the risk of not winning larger pots. You said win well. I just did. I took in ten thousand credits on that game.” And that meant five hundred credits for her. Added to the rest of what she had made that shift, she had a pretty little pot.
Renall didn’t bend at the mention of the sum like she thought he would. “Listen to me; I won’t argue this one with you. If you lose a massive amount of credits because you choose to bluff a hand, then you will have to pay back the losses.”
