19


“I’m not a big card player, X. When did you start making appointments for me without asking what I wanted?”
“I was able to work with AI Mavis and Path to convince Henshaw to attend,” X-37 said. “He is fond of games of chance, and I believe he will wish to influence President Coronas and Rejon of Xad.”
“Okay, you have my attention. Not that I like that particular scenario, but it could be informative,” I said. “I’ll need you to research whatever card games we’re playing and help me cheat.”
“That is quite unethical,” X-37 said.
“I’m not trying to take their money, I just want to stay ahead of the real game,” I said. “If Henshaw is unraveling, I need to know. If he’s holding back, I need to know that as well. If all he wants is to get the hybrids destroyed, then maybe that’s what we should do.”
“I have downloaded and analyzed all relevant games of chance common in the Union. This also includes one transcript of a live-streamed poker game in which Henshaw did very well back on Roxo III. I’m searching now for information on Xad and Wallach games.”
“I knew I could count on you, X. Where are we playing this high-stakes game?”
“Henshaw wanted to do it on the Lady Faith, but the security teams of President Coronas and Rejon disagreed immediately.”
“Of course,” I said. “I don’t suppose we could do it on the Jellybird?”
“I made that suggestion. Rejon and Coronas are open to the idea, but their security teams opposed it,” X-37 said. “It seems they had settled on the private viewing deck of the Bright Lance.”
“I didn’t know there was such a thing,” I said.
X-37 gave me directions and I hurried toward the game. Hallways became narrower and narrower and the security doors more frequent. I felt like I was being watched more than normal and wondered if AI Mavis was as benevolent as X-37 seemed to think she was.
The observation deck was nearly as small as the one on the Jellybird and had more security than seemed necessary. Four of the Presidential Guards of Wallach crowded one wall, the tops of the exoskeleton armor nearly touching the ceiling. Rejon’s honor guard consisted of six men in resplendent uniforms, more formal than anything I’d seen so far—stiff collars, polished buckles, and unit patches with their home planet on it.
“Not exactly a private game,” I muttered.
“Agreed,” X-37 said. “My advice is to focus on not losing too much. This isn’t a good place to press Henshaw for information.”
“I need to know what has them so worked up.”
X-37 asked me to scan the room so that he could record its dimensions and also analyze the potential strengths and weaknesses of the security teams. “I will look for an opportunity to learn his secrets.”
“Welcome, Halek Cain.” Coronas graciously waved one hand toward a seat near her. “Glad you could make it. It’s been a long time since I relaxed with friends.”
“Not sure this is going to be relaxing,” I said as I joined her.
Rejon took a seat on the other side of me. “Are you a strong gambler, Reaper?”
“Only if I cheat.”
Everyone in the room laughed, including Henshaw. He quickly became the man I remembered meeting on Roxo III. He dealt us into a game of poker with very little small talk.
“We’re playing Seven Card Armada,” he said. “Dealer chooses the game. Ten credit ante. We’re using the Exodus Fleet Monetary Agreement, or EFMA, credits.”
“I’ve heard of this game.” Corona was growing more serious. “Shouldn’t we put all of our weapons on the table like in the tablet stories I read growing up?”
The mood was light, and we all laughed. There was more than enough firepower in the room to get everyone killed. The exoskeleton guards had obvious weaknesses, but I didn’t know how fast they could move or how accurate they were with their weapons. X-37 warned me the probable strength of the units was enough to rip doors open or crush anybody dumb enough to get caught in their oversized hands.
Seven Card Armada proved to be much faster than I had hoped, and I quickly lost most of my credit chips. For the next hour, I struggled to stay in the game. What I noticed, however, was a very distinct situation between Coronas and Rejon—admiration and rivalry.
“I need to win,” I said to the table, but was really talking to X-37.
“You should be winning by now,” X-37 said. “My analysis suggests that everyone at the table is cheating.”
I didn’t have the appropriate hand signal for indignant surprise. Henshaw, I knew would push the limits. He had a limited artificial intelligence that he’d used for games of chance in the past.
“If you recall from our first encounter with the people of Wallach, their most important political figures have a version of limited artificial intelligence. Perhaps she is also cheating,” X-37 said.
Amanda Coronas, the most powerful woman of the Wallach people, smiled at me sweetly. I turned my attention to Rejon, who appeared extra dignified. With subtle hand movements, I asked X-37 about him.
“I can neither confirm nor deny Rejon’s use of an LAI,” X-37 said.
Basically, X couldn’t help me now. I drew my final card, studied it, and pushed every credit chip I had into the center of the table.
Seconds passed. Tension rippled around the table. Coronas no longer smiled at me and Rejon became as inscrutable as Path. Several agonizing moments later, both of them folded.
“Call.” Henshaw pushed his own chips forward.
Per the rules of Seven Card Aramada, I disregarded two cards and lay down my betting hand—three tens, all gold stars, and a pair of planets.
Henshaw disregard his two cards, then spread an Admiral’s Flush—a starship, a slip tunnel, a victorious fleet card, a flagship, and a green planet.
“Really?” I asked. “What are the odds of that hand this late in the game? Never mind, I don’t want to know,” I said.
Coronas and Rejon laughed as Henshaw cleaned off the table.
“That was informative,” I said. “Let’s never do it again.”
“I always suspected Reapers would be poor losers,” Henshaw said. “You could win it back.”
“No way, Jimmy. I’m out of my league here,” I said. “And I’m broke.”
“There’s always something to wager,” Henshaw said.
“Yeah, that’s true. But if we play again, I’m smoking a cigar like a true poker player and you won’t have a chance. You might want to factor that in before you try something slick.”
“Nothing good can come of this, Reaper Cain,” X-37 said. “This is not about poker. Henshaw is up to something more than a game of cards.”
“I’m curious,” Coronas began. “What kind of things would you wager? I’ve been told that Reaper Cain originally found you gambling in the company of Vice Admiral Nebs. What were you trying to win from him?”
“What are you insinuating?” Henshaw asked.
“You know more about what’s going on here than any of us,” she said.
“The truth is worse than I suspected,” he said. “When I approached Vice Admiral Nebs on Roxo III, I thought Ayers was dead.”
“What is the real wager you’re interested in?” Coronas asked.
Henshaw smiled with half his mouth. “This is the Reaper’s game. He invited all of us. I suspect that he is manipulating each of us to get the answers he wants.”
I scooped up the cards, shuffled them, and tapped them straight. Henshaw claimed he thought Ayers was dead. He had been after something from Nebs and now I was worried I understood what it was, not that it should surprise me. There were two personality traits that defined Henshaw: his uncontrollable hunger for knowledge, and his pride. He wanted Ayers dead for his own reasons.
Or that was my working theory. X-37 and I each needed more data, so I decided to draw out the game long past the point it should have ended.
We played for bragging rights, smoking cigars and sipping whiskey more than we were betting. Coronas had a nice laugh. Rejon turned out to be a sleepy drunk who mumbled hilarious anecdotes that would probably make more sense if I’d been raised as a salvager.
We all knew there was more to this encounter. None of us knew who was going to show their real hand first.
“The most important thing we can do,” Rejon said when his head seemed to have cleared a bit, “is gather every possible resource from the system before moving on.”
“I disagree,” Coronas said. “The system is not special. It’s time to move, find a richer system, maybe even a planet we could build a home on for our people.”
Henshaw locked gazes with me as the leaders of Wallach and Xad went back and forth. I waited for a lull in the discussion and jumped in.
“What’s your opinion, Henshaw? You clearly have something on your mind,” I said.
Coronas and Rejon faced the ocular engineer who had parted us from our credits. Silence held the moment. When Henshaw spoke, his voice cracked—possibly from the cigars or possibly from some dark dread that was torturing him.
“Neither of those things matter,” he said. “We have to deal with the alien hybrid problem. And before you disagree, I’m well aware that they are contained in their own cryo-pod prisons. Each of you is smart enough to understand that is a short-term solution at best. The implications of the technology and what Doctor Ayers is trying to achieve should terrify you.”
“We’ve covered this,” I said. “They may not be totally innocent, but they haven’t exactly had due process. If you think I’m going to murder them in their sleep, you don’t know as much about reapers as you thought.”
“Clearly,” Henshaw said.
“And we’ll need Doctor Ayers to advise us on other problems with people recovering from the cryo-pods,” I said.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Henshaw, but my security advisors agree with Halek Cain. We can contain the threat and possibly learn something from the technology. Sometimes the best medical and civilian uses of technology come from what were originally military projects,” Coronas said.
“The chances of even one hybrid escaping is too high. The consequences will be horrific.” Henshaw shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “But what’s worse is what will happen if we meet the aliens this DNA came from. What will they think of us when they realize we made monsters out of their DNA and ours? From what I’ve seen, they don’t look very forgiving, and I would hate to fight a war against them.”
Coronas and Rejon went pale.
“What do you think we should do with them?” Coronas asked.
“Eject Ayers and his creations into the void, preferably toward a star that will destroy all evidence of their existence,” Henshaw said. “I’m a scientist, always looking to learn the mysteries of the universe, so if I’m telling you this, you should listen.”
“That’s all the more reason to keep moving,” Coronas said. “We need to find a defensible place with sufficient resources to rebuild.”
Henshaw practically ignored the two most powerful leaders in our migrating society. “Tell me you have a better solution, Reaper.”
“We can offload the test subjects that are too far gone onto a planet in the system we don’t plan to return to,” I said. “We keep Ayers alive and require him to care for the others. I’m no expert on gene splicing, but if they did it, they should be able to undo it.”
“Your idea has flaws,” Rejon said. “If the existence of these monsters has the potential to anger a powerful alien race, leaving evidence of our crimes on a random planet is a bad idea.”
Coronas looked at me, her face unreadable. Rejon’s logic seemed to be going someplace I didn’t like.
No one touched their cards. The poker game, for all practical purposes, was over. I held Coronas’s gaze. After about ten seconds, she made a motion for her guards to wait outside. Rejon did the same.
“What’s really going on here, Jimmy?” I asked.
The ocular engineer’s face flushed red and the lights in his artificial eyes dimmed until they were almost invisible. He trembled slightly.
“Ayers and I were competitors for the favor of Nebs. Things got out of control. He threatened to send demons after me. It was a threat I thought ridiculous until now.”
“All this time, you’re just looking after yourself. You think one of these alien hybrids is going to come for you?” I asked.
“You’re right, Reaper. But that doesn’t change anything. Sure they’re coming for me, but they’re going to come for all of you too.”
“We will need a way to fight them,” Rejon said.
Coronas nodded enthusiastically, picking up the thread of the conversation. “It is distasteful, but we are going to need every weapon we can come up with to defend ourselves.”
“Can you control him, Mr. Henshaw?” Rejon asked.
“Not only no, but hell no,” I said.
“I agree with Rejon, I think,” Coronas said, sounding excited. “Mr. Henshaw is the only one who can really understand what Doctor Ayers was planning to do. And he is the most motivated not to allow him to escape. I propose that we grant him supervisory authority over Ayers and the alien technology.”
“I concur,” Rejon said quickly. “There are often risks that need to be taken for the greater good.”
“What the hell are you talking about, greater good?” I couldn’t believe what was happening. “You want a scientist who is so radical he removed his own eyes in charge of a scientist crazy enough to splice alien DNA with human DNA? Am I missing something? How is this a good idea?”
“He will be closely supervised,” Coronas said.
Rejon nodded in agreement. “Yes, the President of Wallach is correct. We have a ship full of well-trained security officers, a Reaper, and a Reaper’s team. Everything is under control.”
“Fuck.”
“That is very eloquent, Reaper Cain,” X-37 said, but I thought my LAI was even less happy about this development than I was.
Henshaw smiled, and I realized he’d been doing a lot more than playing poker. The man had set this entire encounter up somehow and just beat me hands down.
“If this goes wrong, Jimmy, I’ll be coming for you,” I said. “Don’t forget what I am. Demons are from fairytales to scare children. I’m the last Reaper and you know what I can do.”