Gambler

S.J. Bryant

Copyright 2015 Saffron Bryant

Published by Saffron Bryant at Smashwords

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To everyone who challenges the past and
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CHAPTER ONE

"Do you have any idea how worried we were?"
Nova said, clenching her fist.

She squeezed Aart's shoulder, her nails
burying into his flesh. He sat in a sparse metal chair, looking
sheepish. They were in a back-alley bar on Tabryn. Nova had managed
to follow his trail through the Pleasure District before finally
catching up with him thanks to his loud mouth. Luckily for her, he
had no problem spreading his name from one end of the universe to
the other.

"I'm sorry," he said again, his cheeks
reddening.

Nova shook her head and stared down at her
long-time friend. She had spent days wasting her time searching
through the district. She had been worried sick, and for what? To
find him deep in his drinks in a dirty tavern, with unsavoury
characters spattered all about him. She'd then dragged him through
the streets until they'd found an abandoned warehouse.

"What were you thinking?" Nova demanded.

"You were worried about me," he said with a
grin.

Nova's face darkened and she moved closer to
Aart so that their noses were almost touching. She could feel his
breath on her face. His eyes were light but they held something
else, something more.

"What. Were. You. Thinking?" Nova repeated,
emphasising each word.

"You don't understand," Aart said, shaking
his head. He glanced around as if he expected to see Confederacy
enforcers in every corner. "I found more."

"More what?" Nova asked, rolling her
eyes.

"More people like me. Who see the
Confederacy for what it is. Don't you see, Nova? With all of us
working together we could finally overthrow the Confederacy and get
rid of it!"

"Shh!" Nova's eyes flew wide and she clamped
her hand over Aart's mouth. Her eyes flicked about the warehouse
and her heart pumped into overdrive. He hadn't even whispered! "Do
you have any idea what they'll do to you if you're heard talking
like that?"

Nova lifted her hand away from Aart's mouth,
but her shoulders didn't relax.

"Yes, but someone has to do it, Nova! We're
being kept in the dark. The outer galaxies and Resource Districts
are treated like cattle while the Confederacy goons live in places
like Haven."

"Aart, you can't say things like that.
You'll start a riot," Nova pleaded.

"Maybe that's a good thing. Someone needs to
shake things up, and if that has to be me then so be it."

"Stop," Nova said, throwing her hands up in
the air. "Just stop. I don't know what you've got yourself into,
but I am not going along with it."

"Oh come on, Nova, you're already part of
it. Besides, you should be fighting for this; lost little urchin of
Tabryn."

"Don't you dare talk about that," Nova said,
her nostrils flaring. "The Confederacy is not going to change. All
you're going to achieve with this little stunt is an early
grave."

"Nova, I really want to fight this war on
the same side as you."

"I'm not on anyone's side."

"Don't you see? That's just it. By not
picking a side you're already on their side."

"Aart, we can't talk about this here. We're
in the middle of unfriendly territory and we have no idea who else
might be listening. Please, just promise me you won't do anything
stupid until we can sit down and talk properly. We'll meet at The
Jagged Maw."

Aart stared at her. His mouth formed a flat
line and the laughter left his eyes. He nodded once.

"Good," Nova said with finality. "Now
please, get off this back-water planet. There're a lot of people
waiting to hear from you at the Maw. The next time you decide to
disappear on a suicide quest, please let someone else know!

"Yeah, okay," Aart said, a grin splitting
his face. He was back to his usual self.

Nova nodded and stepped backwards, making
room for him to get up from his chair. He stood and sauntered out
of the warehouse leaving Nova surrounded by nothing but emptiness.
She glanced around again at the walls and floor. There didn't seem
to be any eyes or ears watching her but one could never be
sure.

She left the warehouse and went straight to
the relative safety of Crusader. She'd give Aart some time to cool
down and wait for the others to talk some sense into him, before
she'd return to The Jagged Maw.

CHAPTER TWO

Nova smashed the wrench down onto the metal
desk and cursed under her breath. She dove under the control board,
tightening bolts and rearranging wires. The small room filled with
smoke that hissed out from between the cracks in the control
panel.

Nova's black hair was pulled away from her
face with a simple band and glowed in the flashing orange light
that filled the command centre. Her legs poked out from underneath
the command desk, wrapped in their customary black jeans and
knee-high black boots.

"Argh! Why can't you work for just five
minutes?" Nova shouted as an alarm sounded and she worked even more
furiously through the steam.

"If you had replaced the wires a month ago
when I informed you that their condition was poor, we would not be
having this problem," said an exasperated voice.

Nova pushed herself out from under the metal
desk for enough time to cast a glare at the metallic orb that
hovered a little way back from the dashboard. C4L, or 'Cal' as Nova
liked to call him, was round, about the size of a football, with a
camera lens that swivelled down to stare back at her.

Nova sighed and returned to her work. She
was desperately tightening valves as they came lose at the same
time as trying to find the source of the original leak.

"The ship's maintenance log says the fifth
input fuse has blown," Cal announced from his position, now even
further away from the rattling, hissing, set of controls which was
the command unit.

"Got it!" Nova yelled as she pulled out the
offending fuse and replaced it.

The control board gave a final shake and
burst of steam as the alarms stopped. She breathed a sigh of relief
and let her head fall to the metal floor of the ship. She wiped the
sweat from her brow with the back of her hand and pushed herself
out from under the control board.

Nova pulled herself up and sat into the
command chair, bringing her feet up to rest on the control board.
The flashing orange lights were gone, leaving the many buttons and
levers that guided her ship, Crusader. In the very centre of the
control panel was an old-style wheel which she could use to control
the ship's movements instead of the ever-present autopilot.

The front screen looked out over the black
panorama of space. Distant stars twinkled through the night but
surrounding them was quiet.

With her legs still on the control panel
Nova turned and called over her shoulder, "Cal! You can stop
hiding. It's fixed."

The robot hovered into view and came to a
stop just in front of Nova.

"I wasn't hiding," he said. "I was taking
inventory in the storage room."

"Really?" Nova asked, raising an eyebrow.
"How many boxes of parts do we have in there?"

"I didn't get up to counting the parts yet,"
Cal responded, his voice flustered.

Nova grunted and turned back to her
controls.

"Okay, so we've come all the way to the
damned Pleasure District. Check the Cloud; are there any jobs on
the boards?" she asked the robot.

Cal's eye turned to the front window where
the display changed to show multiple boxes of text. Jobs had been
posted onto the boards from all over the universe for bounty
hunters such as Nova.

It was said the Cloud contained all the
information there was to know, but sometimes someone would discover
something new and had the great honour of adding the information to
the Cloud. There used to be new things to add all the time, as new
planets and alien races were discovered, but for the last fifty
years additions had slowed down. There was less and less to
discover as more of the universe became 'known'.

"There's a military coup over on Mildura,"
Cal said, taking data from the board.

"Ugh. I am not getting into one of those
again," said Nova, waving her hand.

"There's a job transporting beans from Sello
to Fastoon."

"Beans? Ha! Who would believe that? I'm not
risking my freedom by transporting Sellovian drugs."

Nova closed her eyes and rested back against
the familiar chair. Here in Crusader was one of the few places she
felt she could relax, and no-where more so than her pilot's
seat.

"Escaped convict?" Cal asked.

"Oooh, a convict! Where is it?"

"Milky Way Quadrant," Cal replied.

Nova narrowed her eyes at Cal. "The heart of
the Human Confederacy? I don't think so."

"Someone wants help catching a casino thief,
there's a couple of lost dogs, and everything else I told you about
yesterday."

"What happened to all the good jobs?" Nova
asked with her eyes still closed. "Where's the casino job?"

"Right here on Tabryn," Cal replied.

Nova's eyes flew open briefly to stare at
the robot but Cal seemed not to notice. She sighed heavily, pulled
her legs off of the control panel, and returned them to the floor,
her chair creaking all the while.

"How much?" she asked.

"Two thousand credits," Cal replied, turning
from the screen to Nova. "With that we could replace all the
fuses." His tone was curt and Nova rolled her eyes.

"Why did it have to be Tabryn?" she asked.
"I suppose I did say I wanted a job near here."

Cal didn't bother to respond.

Nova leant with her head in her hands as she
went over her options. The control room was quiet except for the
rumbling of her ship's engine and the whirring of Cal's cooling
fan.

"Okay, make a course for Tabryn, but keep an
eye on the boards. If another job comes up, I want to know about it
straight away; preferably somewhere nice. This is the Pleasure
District; there has to be somewhere that I'd like to be."

"Received," Cal said.

Nova nodded and sauntered away from the
command pod as Crusader went into autopilot and prepared for a
space jump. The command pod was small, taken up mostly by the
controls. A narrow corridor led through the ship to the other
compartments.

Past the dining pod, Nova took the right
hand door and stepped into the largest room on Crusader: the
storage bay. The engine took up most of the room, and panels and
drawers lined the walls, leading into storage pods.

Nova surveyed the storage area and satisfied
herself that everything was in order before returning to the eating
area and the small alcove that lead off it. She used the side of
her fist to punch a white button on the wall and a metal bunk
dropped down with a squeak.

The sheets were still tangled from when Nova
had last got up; it was a wonder that it had fit back into its wall
space at all. She climbed onto the bunk and lay on her back with
her eyes closed. The lull of Crusader soothed her into
semi-consciousness. She was about to drop off when her thoughts
returned to Tabryn.