40
“Raise you twenty,” Lyra said, an evil look in her eyes.
Rev counted his tiles. He didn’t know if the sailor was bluffing or not. The woman was generally considered bat-shit crazy by everyone else, which made her hard to read. But twenty was just too risky. He was sitting on a ramp-the-hard-way, which was a decent set, but not an unassailable one.
“Fold,” he said with regret. He tapped his bank, sending this previous wager to her. “And with that, I’m out.”
“Big bad Marine, getting schooled by little ol’ me.”
Having folded, he lost his seat and gave it up to Ramonde. He could get back in the queue, but he’d lost enough over the last week. Time to give it a rest.
“You’re really making the Corps look bad,” Tomiko said as he took a seat beside her.
“Not that you or any of the others were going to help.”
“We’re not stupid,” she said, lifting up a Dewey in emphasis.
“Don’t know how you drink that shit,” Rev said.
In all truth he kind of liked the yellow drink, but he needed to vent. He was more bored than anything else. Two months was too long to be sitting on their asses, even if their accommodations were pretty high-end for Marines and sailors. They had private rooms, good chow, and plenty of entertainment options.
“The lieutenant hear when we’re getting out of here?” he asked Tomiko.
“Which one?”
“Our lieutenant.”
“Then, no.”
“Well, then Lieutenant Sampson,” he said, naming the Seabee OIC.
“No, not him either.”
“Geeze, Miko, then why’d you ask me which lieutenant?”
“’Cause I like to fuck with you. You know that.”
Which was true. Even if the two had a closer bond than ever. Most of the guests were Navy: Seabees and the cargo handlers who’d loaded the Centaur. They turned out to be pretty good people, and Rev liked them, but sometimes there was a disconnect. The lieutenant, Nix, and Hussein were the only other Marines with them, and that was better. But no one had gone through the same two-week interrogation as had the two of them. Officially, it was a debrief, but it sure didn’t feel like it. And the two of them were the only ones who’d had their AIs removed.
Rev felt the loss, but Tomiko was downright fond of hers—Pikachu—and she hadn’t taken it very well. She was as bad as the jackheads he’d so derided back on Safe Harbor, going through withdrawal.
They’d both been told their AIs would be returned, but Rev didn’t know why it had taken this long. At least, no one had chewed his ass for the selfie. His AI would have to reveal it, but only if the right question was asked.
“Any rumors on our friend?” Tomiko asked him.
He was tempted to give her shit as payback, but he let it slide. “Same old, same old.”
None of them expected to be told much. The mere fact that they’d been locked away from everyone was proof enough that this was some no-shit classified stuff, and none of them had the need-to-know. But it was pretty hard to keep every bit of information away from them, if only by interpreting the questions asked. Collating all that information and discussing it had become the group’s favorite sport.
What they’d agreed to so far was that the Centaur’s riever mech hadn’t self-detonated when the Centaur had died because of a mechanical problem. As advanced as they were, it was good to know they still had glitches like that.
As for the Centaur, the leading theory was that this one wasn’t sick, as far as that went, but that the entire species was on decline. Rev wasn’t sure about that. How could they tell that from one specimen?
The one thing that seemed certain, however, was that the Centaur hadn’t been killed by the Marines, at least not directly. The mech had been shot down, but the Centaur inside had survived until impact. Even then, it was alive, but it died because of a lack of oxygen.
It had been asphyxiated.
It sort of made sense. Rev himself, with all his augments, had needed a supplemental O2 supply on the planet.
Then again, all of that could be bullshit. How would any of them know for sure? The Omega Division was undoubtedly listening in to their chatter, and who knew what they’d do if the group hit a nerve?
“I just hope the eggheads know what to do with her.”
No one knew if the Centaur was male or female, or if it even had a gender, but Tomiko insisted on referring to it with the feminine pronoun.
“Yeah. Otherwise, this great vacation of ours will all be wasted,” he said, sweeping an arm to encompass the room.
Tomiko just snorted. The facilities matched up to any resort, but both of them—all of them—wanted to get back to their units. Which in a way made no sense. Both Rev and Tomiko were conscripts, serving only because of a corrupted system. All they wanted to do was to get to their End of Enlistment in one piece, and as long as they were guests of the OD, they weren’t out there getting killed. Each day here was one more day crossed off until their discharge.
Still, Rev felt guilty for being here when the others could be on their way to another fight. All they knew was who had survived the last fight. They’d been able to ask that, at least. And to his amazed pleasure, none of his crew had bought it. That was two major battles, and except for Krissy, they had all still been in the land of the living at that time. But since then, they were in the dark.
“You think they know we’re still alive?” he asked.
“Maybe, maybe not. Probably not, in case, you know, they have to disappear us.”
Rev gave a mental grimace. He’d actually considered that as they were ferried to wherever they were now. That concern had faded over the last two months. If they were going to do that, it would already be done. But gallows humor was part and parcel to those in uniform.
“I’d rather they disappear us than have us sitting around here with our thumbs up our asses.”
“What, and miss my sterling company?”
The hatch into the common roof opened, and the two lieutenants barged in, cutting off whatever snappy comeback Rev might have had.
Lieutenant Omestori put two fingers into his mouth and blasted a piercing whistle to get everyone’s attention.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Lieutenant Sampson started.
“Ain’t no ladies here,” Lyra said to everyone’s laughter. “Nor goddamned gentlemen.”
The Navy lieutenant waited for the laughter to die down, then said, “You’re going to want to hear this, so pipe down. We’re finally done with this little mission. We’re going home.”