by Celeste Raye
The game ended. The man she’d been watching so carefully won the small pot. The others began to drift off, but he stayed on. Fresh players came and went. The hours passed. Her body began to cramp. The pots got bigger. She won three out of ten. He took two. Very modest pots, but an advantage.
Clara was enjoying the skills she was seeing in him. If she didn’t know better, she would have sworn that he was just what he seemed to be: a very lucky novice. That nagging sense of familiarity kept creeping up on her. Eventually, they were the only players at the table. The others had gone in search of bigger pots and less savvy opponents. Clara leaned across the table, her eyes searching the man’s face. “I know you’re faking it. You are no beginner.”
His eyes didn’t shy away from hers. “I know you do. Father would be disappointed to know that you were fooled by a fumbler.”
His voice changed as he spoke. Clara’s mouth sagged open. Her eyes blinked rapidly. Her heart stood still. Her mouth formed one word. “Joshua?”
He smiled. “It’s me, sis.”
Oh! Her hands stilled and flew upward. She dropped them quickly, her gaze shooting across the room. Nobody was paying attention, but that didn’t mean they would continue to ignore her and the table. She whispered, “How?”
Joshua, her brother, said, “Father and I managed to bribe a guard. He left a door open for three seconds, which was all we needed. We escaped and meant to go to the side Mother was in, but we could not get that far before we were spotted. We had to run for it.”
Her breath caught in her throat. “You had a genetic lift and facial surgery.”
He nodded. His mouth was flat and grim. “I did. We both did. We had to go to the Lower and take the stash. Luckily nobody had discovered it.”
“Black market?” her eyes were wide. “That’s…you could have died.”
They could have. Black market genetic lifts were dangerous, and it was not uncommon for those who got them to die from the transfusions. Many black market genticers used whatever material was left over in their lines, and they weren’t shy about mixing it into people whose own genetics would not match what they were injecting.
Joshua’s smile was lethal. “We could have, if we had not gone to the house of a geneticer who owed a rather large house debt and was in the unsavory position of either having to sell a son or go to the government work tanks.”
She licked her dry lips. “How did you get here?’
Joshua said, “We used our contacts to find out you had been put on a ship. Then we heard about a body smuggler who had been paid to get Mother out, and where he brought her. We got here two days ago. We managed to get into the cryo room. She’s in there, on the list, but we didn’t see her.”
Clara swallowed hard. “I know. I have not yet finished paying her passage. As soon as I do, I get the key to her cryo.”
Joshua’s jaw tautened. “I have a better idea.”
Her gut clenched. “You do?”
He nodded. “Nobody knows who we are here. You could set up the tables and send the pots my way. We could use the credits I have now and take the house, hard. Same with Father. We would be able to get Mother and run. Get out of here and head somewhere else. I hear there are hundreds of planets like this one out there.”
It was a good plan, but to cheat Renall went against everything she felt for him, even if she knew that what she felt was not and could not be reciprocated by him. She shifted in her seat, her eyes flickering around the room again.
More players were headed for her table. Joshua whispered, “Father and I have a chamber on the fourth. Number twelve. Come talk to us after your shift.”
He laid his cards down. The pot was small. She quickly gathered the cards, saying “You win again, sir.”
He gathered the credits and stood. He spoke in an amused tone. “I think I better not push my luck anymore today.”
He left the table. Clara said, “I am sorry. My shift is over. Give me a moment to clear the table so the other dealer can step in.”
The walls came up around the table. She quickly gathered the remaining credits. She had won much earlier, and even the losses were small thanks to the house cut. Renall would think she had had an off day, and with good reason considering all that had happened before she had had to sit and deal.
The other dealer stepped in as the walls came down again. Clara left the table and then the hall, walking slowly even though she wanted to run. Her father and her brother were there! Her mother was too. Her whole family, all together again.
It should have been a glorious moment, but instead, she was weighted down with the sense of loss that dragged her heart down and her spirits right along with it.
Renall stood in the hall, blocking her way. He said, “I need to speak with you.”
Not this and not now. She sighed. “Why? I think you have said everything you need to say to me.”
“Not everything. I am sorry I asked you to be my mistress. I will admit…” His lips curled downward. “The thing about my race is that we are not given to wed for what you humans call love. I don’t know how to break a pact I made, and what is more, I can’t. I have to have defenses for that planet.”
She said, “I understand why you do. I understand all of it. But that doesn’t make it less painful for me. I don’t want to discuss it either. I just want to go to my chamber now.”
Actually, she wanted to go to Joshua’s chamber. She wanted to see her father and talk of ways to get Megda out of that cryo box and them off Orbitary.
Renall said, “Due to the fact that Federation is greedy and always looking for a fortune to confiscate and the fact that they know how mine and my siblings’ was built, and the simple conclusion that if we do not act now, all will be lost, I have purchased the planet and begun the shipments of things to it. I must go though—and soon.”
Clara asked, “What about the hall?”
Renall sighed. “I already sold it. Everyone has the choice of going to the new ownership or leaving.”
Her heart sank. “Including me.”
His face was so hard to read. Clara stared at him, wishing he would say that he loved her. That he wanted her to go wherever he was off to, but she knew that would not and could not happen. “Yes, even you.”
Her breath stopped in her throat. The aching in her heart got bigger and heavier. “I see.”
He held out a hand. On his palm lay her crypto file and the key to her mother’s cryo- chamber. Her eyes went back to his face, but she still had no idea what it was he wanted from her.
He wanted her to go? Wanted her to stay?
Tears gathered and tried to fall, but she held them back. Her pride would not let her weep in front of him. She could not weep in front of him. The tiny slivers of dignity were all she had left, and there was no way she could give him those too. She had already given him her body and her heart, and she had known better than to do that. She had tasted betrayal before, and she knew, had always known, that when it came to him and that planet he dreamed of, there was no way he would choose her.
How could he choose her over a planet he had spent lifetimes in the pursuit of?
Her trembling fingers plucked the items up and then curled over them. She said, “I still owe you.”
“No. I loosed all the indentureds as well. If they stay here, they do so debt free. The same for the Gurley girls.’
Of course he had. Renall knew slavery and its yoke. He would not run on his slaves or his people. She whispered, “You could take many with you. They would go. They would jump at the chance of populating a new planet.”
“I have agreed to take several. I have a small colony I want to start first. Maybe once things settle and are easily habitable for a larger group of people, I shall try to recruit beings to live there.”
You could ask me to go, but how could I say yes to that knowing you are so near and yet so far from me? That you are wed to another and that you will not ever love me the way that I love you? She swallowed that line of thought
and the salty lump in her throat. “Well then. I wish you well.”
“I wish you the same.”
They faced each other, awkward and unsure. Clara wanted to say so many things but why bother? It would do no good to plead her case. She was but a human woman, and he held in his hands the lifetime dream he had been after, and the pact that would help make that happen.
Hurting and blinded by tears she could not afford to let fall, Clara turned and left the room, walking fast—walking away from him. She did not look back. She could not look back. She was horribly afraid that if she did, she would go to her knees and beg him to love her. To be with her. To not throw them away.
But he had thrown them away by not breaking that pact, and by asking her to simply be his mistress. She did not need that in her life. She was not willing to settle for less, and he was not willing to give her any more than that, so there they were at an impasse that saw her having to leave his side, and stay gone, forever.
Chapter 15:
Renall’s hands closed on nothing. He had hoped she would leave those things there, say that she wanted to be with him. But he could not blame her for not doing so.
He had been a fool. He had offered her nothing. No security, no safety, not even his protection. Just the promise he would get her father and brother from serio-max and get all of them into a property on his planet, not close to his home of course, but near enough for him to travel to see her.
“I’m an idiot.”
He was. He was an idiot about to wed a being he did not want to wed or mate with while the woman he wanted more than anything else, more than even the planet he had dreamed so long of owning, was leaving him in her dust.
And he had only himself to blame.
Talon entered the room. He asked, “You all right?”
“No.”
The terse word was the only answer he could give that would be truthful. Marik and Jeval entered next. They were all dressed and ready to depart. They looked at him. Talon sighed then said, “Listen, if you break the pact—we won’t disown you.”
Renall wanted to both laugh and cry at the same time. “I can’t.”
Jeval said, “Yes you can. Tell Morilan you will give him the rest of the credits to make his stupid temple and call it even. That he can keep both the temple and his daughter and remain your friend or he can fight that decision and become your enemy.”
Renall said, “I can’t. I made a promise and now, more than ever, I can’t break it. We’re wanted. Despite the Federation having no reach to our planet, we still have to worry about bounty fetchers and the like.” He gave Talon a long look. “If you survive this foolish decision to go after the Gorlites, that is. What is more, I cannot afford to make an enemy of him and his people, and you know it.”
“I do know it,” Talon said. “I also know I would rather have you happy, even if it means being without their support, than see you saddled with a being you do not want in your life or bed, and who perhaps is not even ever going to love you as much as your credits.”
“Me too,” Jeval said.
Marik said, “If need be, we can find a way to protect our planet. We had discussed many ways of doing so long before you struck that bargain.”
They had. And he had considered all of those things. His head dropped. “I appreciate it. I do. But the truth is, she won’t go with me. I really angered her and…”
Talon said, “Then you better use every bit of that logic of yours to try to convince her before she gets gone.”
Talon was right. It came down to a simple choice. If he wanted Clara or not, and he did.
Chapter 16:
Clara stood before the window in her chamber, letting the tears fall. She had no love for Orbitary, but she also had no destination in mind either. She was uncertain about the future, and she had to get her mother out of that cryo-chamber and onto a passage somewhere. But where? Where could they go? She had her father and Joshua back now, and close by. They could go anywhere now, but where was there to go?
Her tele-call chirped. Clara answered it and found Joshua looking back at her. It was still startling, his transformation. She said, “Yes?”
Joshua said, “I just won a massive pot. Father’s at a table. Are you going to be in the hall soon? We waited for you in the chamber all night, but you never came so we figured you must have had to do something else.”
Guilt hit. She had spent the entire night trying to wrestle with the hardest of all decisions. She could stay on, but Renall would be gone. She did not know if that would make it easier or harder for her. The hall would no longer be his now anyway. “Yes.” She straightened her shoulders. She knew she had few choices. They could stay on Orbitary long enough to get more credits and then book passage somewhere else, somewhere that halls were legal and they could make more credits. They would probably have to live a very nomadic existence now, and she felt no joy in that thought. “I’ll be right there.”
She clicked off and gathered her things then headed for the hall. Her feet dragged. The last thing she wanted to do was cheat at a table, but Joshua and her father were right. And again, the hall was no longer Renall’s so she could do it and know she had never cheated the man she loved. That was something, at least.
Her head high, she sailed into the hall. The noise hit her ears, and she winced. The tables were packed. The dealer she would be replacing was in the midst of a high-stakes high credits game. No way could they let go yet and it didn’t look like the table would close anytime soon either. She drifted along the banks of the games tables, casting an eye about for a likely prospect.
Joshua lounged at a table, a tall bottle of water in front of him. The expense of that water made her teeth gnash together. He should not waste credits so easily, she thought as she slid into the seat next to his.
Joshua whispered, “What are you doing? You can’t be seen with me.”
“I am not cheating for you, Joshua, for any of us. I don’t have to.” She fumbled the key to the cryo-chamber out and set it on the table. “He gave me the key.”
Joshua regarded the key. He tilted the water into a glass and sipped it slowly and with real pleasure. He took a long breath. “What’s the catch?”
“There isn’t one.”
Joshua snorted. “There is always a catch.”
“Not this time.” Her fingers danced across the table’s top. “Joshua, what do you plan to do? I mean really do? What are we supposed to do?”
His face took on a bleak expression. “I don’t really know. I mean I know we can’t stay here. This place is a credit pit. They charge you every time you breathe it seems like.”
“That’s because they do.” The restrictive nature of Orbitary chafed at her yet again. “It would be far too easy to stay here and keep living in the rooms and working this hall but—but I don’t think that is what I want, really. We’d be chained to yet another kind of debt. No better off than we were in Old Toronto. We would all have to struggle each day to keep the amount of credits we owe low and our wins high and our losses low just so we could buy into another round.”
Joshua’s eyes fastened on the key. His finger slid it towards his body. “I know that. It’s a sucker bet, staying here. I just don’t have any idea of what else is out there, or what to do next.”
Their father appeared. His brow, much smoother and younger now that he had had the lifts and lasers applied, wrinkled as he saw them sitting together. Joshua held up the key and Benson’s face became wreathed in a smile. He took a seat. “How did you do it?”
“He gave it to me. He is selling the hall. Sold it, rather. He gave me the key and my freedom and so now…” I don’t want to be free of him. I want to be with him. But that is never going to happen. I have my family. That is what matters and what I have to deal with right now. She spoke again. “We were just discussing what we should do next. I don’t know, truly, if the new owner of the hall will want to bring in new dealers or not. Even if they do, I am not sure staying here is a good idea.”
Joshua said, “Me either. I agree with you on the fact that staying here will effectively keep us chained to the tables and to debt and we might end up in their debtor’s prison off one bad hand. I think I will pass.”
Benson nodded and passed the key back to Clara. “I also agree with that. First things first we have to get mother out of cryo. Then we can, after she has had time to readjust, sit down as a family and decide what to do.”
Clara looked back at the table she usually manned. Still busy. Still no signs of the dealer or the players letting go. And what was more, her heart was not in it.
Carding was a learned skill. She had always known that. There had been plenty of hands that she had enjoyed, but it had never been something she truly loved and wanted to do. It was all she knew.
Maybe it was time to learn something else.
She stood. “The bays are down below.”
They headed for them. The doors were, of course, locked. They each had to pay a five-credit chip to enter, something that grated on Clara’s nerves. The cryo boxes sat in long rows, and they walked along the rows softly even though they knew that no amount of noise would awaken the beings within them.
A tall being with glowing flesh and a tall, angular skull appeared. “May I assist you?”
Clara held out the key. “We need an awakening.”
“I see.” The key was plucked from her grip and examined. “Oh yes. This way.” He led them to a smaller room off the one they had been walking through. There were far fewer boxes there, and the being went straight to one.
Benson asked, “Why is she being kept in this room?”
The being clicked the key into a large control panel. Lights flashed. Circuits began to whirr. The being said, “Because her awakening is already paid for. The others are debtors and cannot be awakened until their debts are paid.”
Clara’s mouth dropped open. Renall had never told her he had paid for the awakening, which was expensive. She looked at Joshua and Benson. They both looked back at her steadily. They must think I paid it off. She decided not to mention it had been Renall. If she did, they would want to know why, and there was no way she wanted to admit to them that she had fallen in love again, and been betrayed and wounded yet again for her trouble.