Balance of Terror Read online

  A garbed figure detached itself from a group and approached them, gesticulating expansively. Moon couldn’t see what the person looked like, but he? she? exchanged a few words with Gauder and the trader allowed them to be ushered into the interior of a tent. It should have been dark inside, but Moon looked up to see that the apex of the tent was open to the air, the pale sky blazing above them, blocked only by a conjunction of slim support beams. From where she stood, it looked like she was beneath an unfinished spider’s web, the beams glittering silver in the early afternoon sunshine.

  This was…so different to what she’d been expecting from life and, for a moment, she just stood there, soaking in the alien atmosphere. Moon Thadin, premier stellar physicist of the Phyllis Science Centre, now passable cargo tank driver and visitor to one of the more exotic locations that the galaxy had to offer.

  Then a voice spoke close to her ear. “Come on. Gauder says you’re blocking passing traffic.”

  Moon shook her head and smiled wryly at Srin. “Sorry, I got caught up for a moment.”

  “Tell me about it later,” he said and guided her to a small table by the edge of one fabric wall.

  “The Meet moves around from place ter place,” Gauder began as they sat down. “Best t’ avoid any complications that way, if yer get me meaning. In another two weeks, it’ll be gone. But, while it’s here, it’s the closest to a continent-wide gathering you’ll find.”

  “But,” Moon objected, “with all these people travelling to and fro to this one spot, even for a few weeks, won’t that make it easy for the Republic to find us?”

  Gauder shook his head as if lecturing a child. “Lady scientist, haven’t ye been taking any notice of what we’ve been doin’ for the past month? Each sector of the Open is ruled by a warlord and when the Meet happens, yer get several such warlords – and a fair bit of their arsenal – in the one place. Oh, the Republic can try to blow us to smithereens, but they’ll be the ones tryin’ to reassemble their soldiers if they do.”

  “So the Republic just ignores anything that happens outside the cities?”

  “Don’t poke yer nose in, don’t get it chopped off,” Gauder confirmed.

  “It can’t continue,” Srin said.

  “Oh, yer think so, do yer?” Gauder’s eyebrows rose. “Well it’s worked for the past eleven decades already, sick boy. What do yer say to that?”

  “A temporary situation.”

  “Temporary?” The burly dealer guffawed loudly, momentarily garnering the attention of several groups of fellow diners. He cleared his throat and lowered his voice. “Yer call more than a century ‘temporary’?”

  “Yes, so long as it suits the Republic. But if they find something valuable on Marentim, Mr. Gauder, something that’s rare and precious, then no warlord on this planet will be able to stand up to them. At the moment, you’re safe because the giant hasn’t decided to flex its fingers, but if it ever does….”

  Gauder attempted another laugh, but it petered out. “Yer think too much when yer awake,” he finally grumbled.

  It occurred to Moon that her lover was completely correct. Maybe Gauder’s heartfelt paeans to the beauty of the planet’s arid spaces had affected her more than she thought – and she certainly wasn’t going to admit it out loud – but she had been thinking about Marentim, wondering if there was some way she and Srin could use the planet as a base, scouting for medical breakthroughs from a secure home on the desert world. Despite its harshness, or perhaps because of it, Marentim had crept its way into Moon’s soul, beguiling her with its sparse beauty.

  Upon listening to the banter between the two men, however, Moon realised that there was no future for them on this world. What if they settled down…and the Republic found rare minerals on the planet? What if someone stumbled across a viable crease closer to the system, leading to the heart of the Tor system? What if Marentim was close to what the Republic considered to be a strategic target? There were too many variables to feel completely safe. Maybe there might be some security at their next stop, on 3 Enkil IV. But there was still the matter of trusting her ex-partner, Kad, and the rebel network he had kept secret from her for years.

  Moon had been trailing Srin and Gauder after they all finished their quick meal and exited the tent, her mind on other things. There was pride in Gauder’s voice, as if he had single-handedly conjured the Meet from the fine desert sand. At his gestures, Moon looked appropriately to the left or the right, but she had a bigger problem to figure out.

  What I need is some kind of insurance, she thought to herself. Not to be at the mercy of people like Gauder. A way out so if someone tries to double-cross us, we’ll still have an avenue of escape.

  “—no civilisation, well, we can turn to the casino over there and wish ‘em the best o’ luck.”

  Moon stopped. “Casino?” she repeated. Was it a mere coincidence that she was thinking of a difficulty and, suddenly, an apparent solution presented itself?

  The other two stopped and turned.

  “Aye,” Gauder confirmed, “that’s what I said. Ye’ll find the usual games in there, as well as some indigenous to this planet. Are yer game to play, lady scientist?”

  Moon blinked a few times, still disbelieving.

  “I think I’m starting to feel a little lucky, Mr. Gauder,” she finally told him. And smiled.

  “We have to do it in one night,” Srin said.

  Moon grimaced. “Isn’t that going to be too obvious?”

  “More obvious than cleaning them out over two nights? We might be able to explain one night as beginner’s luck. But if we go back and repeat our performance, we’ll only arouse everyone’s suspicions.”

  She chewed at her bottom lip. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

  The cargo hold of their tank was almost three-quarters empty by now, and Moon was using the extra room to pace. Srin thought the gesture looked familiar. Had she done this on the Differential? Was the familiarity an echo of something he’d once seen for himself? From his comfortable seat on the floor, leaning against a tank wall, he watched as she strode back and forth.

  “I asked Gauder about the kind of games they play,” she said, “and he gave me a brief rundown. There’s the usual – some card games, a couple of others with a spinning wheel, and some involving dice, sand and even drops of blood that I don’t know too much about.”

  “I need something with a few well-defined parameters,” Srin mused. “Something that depends on skill but doesn’t look like it depends on skill. It doesn’t even have to be my skill…in fact, it might be better if it doesn’t involve me at all, so that all I have to do is make a bet on someone else’s work.” He paused. “Do we know when our guide is thinking of moving out?”

  Moon lifted her eyebrows. “He says tomorrow night, just after dusk.”

  “Hmmmm. That doesn’t give us much time. How much money do we have to play with?”

  “Around two kilo-credits.”

  Srin looked at her. “And how much of a win are you going to be happy with, Moon?”

  She laughed without mirth. “Happy? I won’t be truly happy until both of us are safe from everyone who wants a piece of your brain and my work. What do I need to buy that? Fifty kilo-credits? Eighty? The skills of an interstellar pilot so we can buy and steer our own ship?” She shook her head. “I don’t know, Srin. Every time I come up with a figure in my head, I get a counter-argument about something I haven’t thought of.”

  “What are we going to do with all this money once we get it? Keep it for a while? Or escape straight away?”

  Moon stopped pacing and looked at him helplessly. “Again, I don’t really know. I just want some independence from everything that’s being played around us. Our own money, our own agenda. At the moment, we’re riding the edge of other people’s largesse – Kad’s, Gauder’s. Their generosity, to do with as they will. Before we touched down on Marentim, it was Leen Vazueb and her medical skills, then the Velvet Storm and its crew spiriting us away from Lunar
Fifteen. Each time, we made it to our planned destination, but it occurs to me that anyone could’ve sold us out before that point and there wouldn’t have been a thing we could have done about it.”

  Srin’s eyes widened. “You’re thinking of ditching Gauder, aren’t you?”

  “Haven’t you?” she countered.

  He shrugged. “Sure, but I have to admit, it’s easier to handle me with another person around than just by yourself.”

  It hurt his masculine pride to say that, but it was only the truth.

  Several seconds of silence passed.

  “You know that’s not how I feel, don’t you?” Moon finally asked in a quiet voice.

  “Moon, all I’m saying—”

  “This is you trying to be noble again, isn’t it?” she interrupted. “You were like that on the Differential as well.”

  Was he? He stared at her, bemused.

  “Well, I didn’t stand for it before and I’m not standing for it now, Srin Flerovs. We’re in this together, right to the end, bitter or sweet.”

  They were brave words, but he heard the catch in her voice. He also knew that getting to his feet to embrace her was probably exactly the wrong thing to do. She needed to feel that she was a strong person. And she was. Srin watched in amazement over the past month, as his beloved took to the life of arms dealer assistant. She learnt how to drive a tank, could navigate in the featureless deserts of Marentim and had become used to a range of living rituals that were as far from her previous existence as his homeworld of Tonia III was to him now. And she had done all of this for the both of them.

  He held his hands up in mock surrender. “Whatever you say.”

  Moon began pacing again. “We have to get to 3 Enkil IV somehow. That’s the only place where I can get in touch with Kad again. Maybe then I can find a way to short-circuit this wild galactic tour he’s got us on.” The tone of Moon’s voice boded ill for Kad Minslok when she finally caught up with him. “But, until then, we’re stuck in this rut.”

  “Do you know where this spaceport is?”

  Wordlessly, Moon shook her head.

  “What about asking Gauder to contact Kad for us? There must be some channel to your friend right here on Marentim. There has to be.”

  “I’ve tried to get him talking about that a couple of times,” Moon answered, “but he changes the subject quicker than a Vansat chameleon changes its skin pattern. For all his brashness, there’s a brain under Gauder’s thick skull. He knows how to keep his mouth shut.”

  “So we just have to hope that he’s leading us in the right direction and not taking us round and round in circles as part of his unpaid labour entourage?”

  Moon compressed her lips. “That’s part of what I hate. The fact that both options are plausible.”

  The following afternoon, Moon and Srin visited the extensive gambling den at Kushin Meet. In the desert winds, the walls and ceilings flapped and billowed, resembling the inhalations and exhalations of some giant beast. With a swallow, and a look of firm resolve, Moon got their two kilo-credits changed to gaming chips and they began walking the floor. At regular intervals, scaffolding had been erected, and tribesmen with long-barrelled, lethal-looking rifles patrolled the narrow platforms, watching the action below them with cold eyes.

  The game Srin chose to play was based on betting what number or symbol a spinning wheel would stop on. He played the good-natured beginner, trying his best to understand the rules.

  “So you can bet on either symbols or the numbers? Really? You don’t have to bet on just one value? Or blue or white? I see. How interesting.”

  He latched on to an older man who appeared to be well-known to the staff and other gamblers.

  “So what are you betting on? Blue? Can I put one bet down with you? Oh, but just to be fair, I should put something down on the other colour too, shouldn’t I?”

  The game, he told Moon before they approached the table, had been simple. By watching how much energy the person spinning the wheel was putting into the task, and the wheel’s initial position, Srin could calculate where the wheel would stop. It also helped that people could still place bets after the wheel had been set spinning. Ostensibly, Moon was there to be his “lucky charm”. She held onto his arm in the pose of a woman who had claimed possession of a promising gambler, but was really leaning on him for support. Despite Srin’s assurances, what they were doing was risky. What if Srin lost everything? If they reached this promised spaceport that Kad told them about, their transport would be expecting money for their passage. What were they going to do then?

  A small cheer pulled her back to the gambling table. Both Srin and his mentor had won and they were now discussing what to bet on next. In this way, over the space of about a dozen turns, both men built up some small but steady gains.

  There was a small scuffle when Srin ‘accidentally’ moved his and his companion’s chips to an adjacent symbol from the one originally agreed on. The local started raising a fuss, Srin was apologising profusely, the person spinning the wheel smirked but – as the ball was about to fall into a pocket – refused to let the bets revert. Moon watched the wheel carefully and breathed out a sigh of relief when it stopped on the symbol that Srin had accidentally chosen. All at once, their fellow gambler’s demeanour changed.

  “It must have been the fate of the gods,” he laughed.

  Srin pocketed the winnings – eight kilo-credits – and turned from the table. “I think I need a drink,” he said loudly to Moon. “Maybe two.”

  “What are you doing?” Moon whispered as they walked away. “Just one more and we could have left.”

  “They were getting suspicious,” Srin replied. “Didn’t you see the replacement spinner waiting behind the table?”

  She was just being greedy, she knew. Eight kilo-credits was four times what they’d walked into the gambling den with. Together with their accumulated winnings, the total they’d made so far came to twelve kilo-credits.

  “We can go now,” she said.

  Srin grinned at her. “Just one more. I haven’t had this much fun in a while.”

  They settled at a corner of the tent that resembled a bar and Srin ordered a flask of the local spirit.

  “They were trying to figure out how I did it,” he remarked, “but they couldn’t. This entire casino is blanketed with sensors, programmed to pick up any device that can be used to manipulate a game.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Didn’t I ever mention my dissolute youth?” he countered with a large smile. “That, and putting two and two together. Like why the guards on the platforms are using mechanical rifles rather than superior electronic equipment. It’s because their advanced weapons won’t work here. Too much jamming.”

  “Oh. And what do we do now?”

  “We enjoy our drinks, while I try to give a good impression of getting drunk. Later, you try to leave but I start arguing with you. You realise that the only way to get me out of here is to place one last bet, but you have to make it a big one. Say, half our entire stash. I argue and give you a number. You deduct ten from that number and bet on the result.”

  “Just like that?”

  “That’s the easy bit. The difficult part comes when we try to cash it in.”

  Moon’s eyes widened. “What do you mean?”

  “Nobody likes to lose a hundred and two kilo-credits, especially when they’re usually the winners.”

  “They’ll stop us?”

  “They’ll try to, but if we play our roles straight, we should be okay.”

  “Should?”

  Srin laughed. “You’re looking tense, all of a sudden. Here, have a drink.”

  Moon didn’t have to try hard to feign irritation. After all they’d been through, were they going to end up buried in the dirt on some desert planet with small hard projectiles riddling their bodies, courtesy of some local gaming bosses? Meanwhile, Srin appeared to be having the time of his life, getting rowdier with each drink. By the time he wi
nked at her to indicate that they should move on to the next part of their plan, she was well and truly ready to leave all of Kushin Meet in the dust.

  “We’re going,” she said firmly, lifting one of his arms and draping it across her shoulders.

  “Just one more,” he begged, and she swore his voice slurred a little. Was this an act or was he really drunk?

  “No, we’re getting out of this place.”

  “C’mon, stop spoiling my fun!”

  In stops and starts, Srin led her to the nearest table that hosted a spinning game.

  “I swear,” he told her, fumbling for the ledge to help support his weight. “One more, that’s all I’m asking for. Just one, then I’ll walk out the door with you.”

  Moon made a show of refusing, giving Srin some time to watch the current spinner and see how much energy she was using on each turn. After a couple of turns had passed, she sighed dramatically.

  “All right. But give me the money,” she demanded.

  “Put it on thirty-four,” he told her, handing her the money, just as the spinner put the wheel in motion. “That’s my favourite number.”

  “Well it’s not mine,” Moon retorted. She threw down a handful of chips. “Six kilo-credits. On twenty-four.”

  The spinner looked unsure. “Twenty-four?” she queried.

  “That’s what I said. My friend is about to learn the lesson of easy come, easy go.”

  The spinner nodded, the bets were locked in and Moon tried to look nonchalant while she watched the wheel, not sure whether she wanted to win or lose. Her heart felt lodged in her throat.

  “Thirty-four,” Srin muttered next to her, loud enough for the gamblers beside them to hear. He sounded genuinely angry. “I said thirty-four.”

  The wheel slowed, moved to a number, appeared about to move beyond it, then slipped back. Under the shiny marker was number twenty-four.

  “That’s six kilo-credits on twenty-four,” the spinner announced.

  “Um, what were the odds?” Moon asked belatedly.