Three Card Monte (The Martian Alliance) Read online

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  Three Card Monte

  (The Martian Alliance 2)

  Gini Koch

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  An imprint of

  Musa Publishing

  Copyright Information

  Three Card Monte (The Martian Alliance 2), Copyright © Gini Koch, 2012

  All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.

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  This e-Book is a work of fiction. While references may be made to actual places or events, the names, characters, incidents, and locations within are from the author’s imagination and are not a resemblance to actual living or dead persons, businesses, or events. Any similarity is coincidental.

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  Musa Publishing

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  Published by Musa Publishing, October 2012

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  This e-Book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of International Copyright Law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines and/or imprisonment. No part of this ebook can be reproduced or sold by any person or business without the express permission of the publisher.

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  ISBN: 978-1-61937-504-8

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  Editor: Celina Summers

  Cover Design: David Efaw

  Interior Book Design: Coreen Montagna

  Dedication

  To the fans who told me they bought an e-reader or

  got e-reading software on their computers

  just to be able to read this series,

  I have but one thing to say:

  You all ROCK and this one’s for you!

  Three Card Monte

  The Martian Alliance

  Book Two

  “INTERESTING NEWS FROM ROULETTE,” Dr. Wufren shared with us, his watery blue eyes twinkling, as we all sat down to dinner.

  “And from Polliworld,” Bullfrog added, as he grabbed his plate from one of Tresia’s pincers.

  “Is this paying news or just gossip?” Roy asked.

  Doven’s feathers ruffled. “Why does the news need to be paying? Don’t we still have plenty left over from our last job?”

  Our last job had been a complicated con for the Andromeda Royal Family. As far as I knew, we still had plenty left over.

  Everyone looked expectantly at Roy. He grimaced. “You know, we’re not just supporting ourselves. We’re helping to run an underground resistance.”

  Kyle rolled his eyes. “Here it comes, DeeDee,” he said to me in a stage whisper. “The ‘Martian Alliance Speech’ again.”

  Roy gave his little brother a dirty look. “You, of all people, should care.”

  I patted Roy’s knee. “It’s okay, oh captain, my captain. We’re all one with the cause.”

  The others all nodded or murmured their assent, most with their mouths full. We were all focused on restoring the galaxy to what it had been before the Diamante Families had taken over, but empty stomachs were a more immediate need.

  Bullfrog grinned, always unnerving because giant walking toads having lots of teeth made most of the other humanoid races nervous. Long tongues were one thing; teeth like any other carnivore in the galaxy were another. “I think the news might be both.”

  “Both what?” Roy asked. He was really testy. I had no idea why. I ran through possibilities: he and I hadn’t had a fight; Kyle hadn’t done anything foolhardy; no one we liked had recently been listed as dead, maimed or injured; and there were no Diamante cruisers anywhere in sight.

  Sure, we were in the middle of nowhere, space-wise. We’d learned a long time ago to take our time between big jobs. Maybe it was boredom.

  “Both gossip and potentially paying,” Bullfrog replied.

  Dr. Wufren nodded. “But we can wait until after dinner to share.”

  “No, go ahead.” Roy sounded resigned.

  I checked everyone else out. No one else appeared upset. Until I looked at Doven. Because he was a Quillian, and so half-man/half-bird, it was hard to tell when he was emotional unless his feathers were ruffled. And ruffled they were. Just a bit, and he flattened them when he caught me looking at him.

  So Roy and Doven were fighting? This was unusual to say the least. However, Dr. Wufren’s next words moved the Roy and Doven issue down to second place for my attention.

  “Monte the Leech has sold part interest in the Palace and is personally opening a new casino on Polliworld.”

  It was hard to turn the crew of the Hummingbird speechless, but this news did the trick. We all stared, open-mouthed, at the good doctor—except Bullfrog and Dr. Wufren himself, both of whom looked smug about having been the ones to break this galaxy-shaking news.

  Roy recovered fastest. “Why?”

  “You want the official reason or the real one?” Bullfrog asked.

  “Both.”

  “Per the press releases,” Dr. Wufren said, “Monte’s done so well with the Palace on Roulette that he wants to expand and bring the excitement of live gambling to the world that likes it best.”

  “That sounds reasonable,” Tresia said. “He could open one on Arachnius, too. I believe we’re second in terms of overall planetary adoration of games of chance.”

  Bullfrog snorted. “The doc left out a key piece of information. Two, really.”

  “Which were?” I asked.

  Ciarissa smiled at Dr. Wufren. “You do like to make a statement, don’t you Fren?”

  “When I can, my dearest. When I can. As our noble Bullfrog has pointed out, the press reports are avoiding two key pieces of information. First: Monte sold that part ownership of the Palace to the Diamante Families.”

  “Willingly?” Roy asked tightly.

  “Who knows, my boy? However, the second bit of information held back is that Monte’s co-owners on dear Bullfrog’s home world are the Polliworld Underground.”

  We were all quiet again, thinking. Kyle broke the silence first. “So? What do we do?”

  Roy grinned. “We go visit our old friend to congratulate him on his new business expansion and see where we can get in on the action.”

  Once dinner was finished, Roy set a slow course for Polliworld. We’d jump to hyperspace after everyone had slept. Some spacers would let their crews sleep during a long jump, but not Roy. He wanted everyone awake and alert when we jumped, in case anything went wrong. It was one of the reasons he was a great captain and leader.

  Standard procedure when we were simply cruising through space was that Roy would take one shift in the captain’s chair and Doven the other. On rare occasions, Kyle was allowed this honor. At least, Roy acted like it was an honor to be the only person awake watching a lot of nothing from the cockpit.

  Doven took the first shift. I watched him and Roy closely—something was still wrong between them.

  I waited until Roy and I were in bed, in part to ensure no one else would hear. The biggest reason was that I enjoyed seeing Roy naked, and didn’t want to risk triggering a “storm out of the room” reaction.

  Not that anyone would blame me for wanting to see Roy, dressed or otherwise. He was tall, handsome, with blue eyes and light brown hair, and was all wiry muscle. He was dressed like normal, in tight pants and shirt, with a double-laser belt and high boots, which was what most spacers from Mars wore.

  Roy radiated masculinity even when he was asleep—even more so a
s he undressed. I drooled a little, but that happened regularly. Seeing as he was ready and willing to again consummate our relationship, I decided the question could wait.

  It waited a good long while, emphasis on long. And good. Really, great. As always.

  “So, what’s going on with you and Doven?” I asked as we lay together in the afterglow.

  “Nothing.”

  “Right, pull the other one. I can tell. Doven’s giving off signs and so are you. I want to know what happened. And I’m willing to keep asking you for the foreseeable future.”

  Roy sighed. “We’ve been arguing.”

  “Gosh, I don’t need Ciarissa’s, or any other telepath’s, help to guess that. What about?”

  “Funny you should mention her. Ciarissa, as a matter of fact.”

  That was weird. “Why?”

  “Doven thinks we’ve been working her too hard.”

  “Have we?”

  “Not as far as she, I, or the doc are concerned.”

  I considered this. “Did Doven make a move on Ciarissa while I was on Andromeda?”

  “No.”

  “She knows he likes her. Doesn’t she? I haven’t talked to her about Doven, but I mean, come on, she’s one of the strongest telepaths in the galaxy, if not the strongest. Why doesn’t he just tell her he wants to be more than friends?”

  “You know, you feel free to have this romantic discussion with my first mate and navigator. As far as I’m concerned, he’s questioning my command decisions without legitimate cause and I’m tired of it.”

  I knew when to let something drop. I snuggled closer and stroked Roy’s chest. He relaxed and was asleep soon.

  I was wide awake. Like me, Doven was one of the last of his kind. Not the last Quillian, but among the last Quillians with what they called Shaman Powers. If it flew, Doven could alter its shape, any time, anywhere.

  The Diamante Families had done their best to wipe out the Shaman branch of the Quillian population, just as they had with shape shifters like me. I wasn’t sure how many were left, but Doven and I were both high up on the extinction list.

  Sleep wasn’t coming. I slipped out of bed and pulled on a flight robe. Calling it a robe was kind of a joke, since it was more like a baby sleeper, complete with feet. However, it was made out of absorbent, lightweight material that conformed to your shape, meaning Doven, Bullfrog, or Tresia could wear one if so desired. Flight robes made running to airlocks or to patch hull breaches a slightly more modest proposition.

  I trotted up to the cockpit. Doven was in the captain’s seat, looking quite alert. He turned his head. “Can’t sleep?”

  “Nope.” I settled into the first mate’s spot. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  Nice to see he and Roy had both practiced that clever response.

  “Right. Will it shock you that I already extracted the argument details out of Roy?”

  “No.”

  “Why haven’t you told Ciarissa how you feel about her?”

  His feathers ruffled. “This isn’t your concern, DeeDee.”

  “The captain and first mate of this vessel are both upset with each other. That affects me and the rest of the crew. We’re heading to Polliworld and I don’t want you and Roy not paying attention to something important because you’re both too busy being angry with each other.”

  “We’ll deal with it.”

  “I’m sure you will. You know, Ciarissa’s a telepath. You can’t seriously think she doesn’t know that you like her.”

  Doven had wings as well as arms and legs, and his head was more birdlike than human. He clicked his beak and glared at me, in the way that birds of all kinds and from any planet seem able to manage—the “I could do terrible things to you if you only knew” look. Cats and birds, they really had it down in terms of glaring ability.

  “I know how powerful she is.”

  I took this admission to its fullest conclusion. “Ah. So you think, because it’s clear you’re madly in love with Ciarissa and she’s never said, ‘let’s snuggle in my cabin’ to you, this means she’s not interested.”

  Doven’s feathers ruffled to the point where I wasn’t sure if he was going to flap his wings out or not. His wingspan was impressive, and it was far wider than the cockpit area. If he flapped, he’d hit me. And I was pretty sure a part of him wanted to hit me.

  But he pulled himself together. Literally. The wings tucked back neatly behind him, the feathers settled down, and the glare was now directed at deep space. “Correct.”

  “You know, sometimes a girl expects the guy to make the first move.”

  “And sometimes ‘the guy’ understands that his love is unrequited.” Doven turned his head toward me again. “But even if all ‘the guy’ receives is friendship, he still cares about his friend and doesn’t want her harmed simply because she refuses to tell her captain no.”

  “What is Ciarissa saying yes to that you don’t think she should be?”

  Doven shrugged his wings. “Everything Roy asks her to do.”

  I sat with Doven for a while longer. We didn’t talk about Ciarissa or Roy. Instead I asked him to tell me a story about his world and how it began. He was a good storyteller, and I liked hearing about each planet’s olden days, before the Diamante Families had decided the galaxy was theirs and the rest of us only got to play in it if they wanted us to.

  A good story can give you many reactions, but if the teller wants you to go to sleep when the story’s done, well, if they’re good, you get sleepy. Doven finished; I yawned widely and trooped back to bed.

  I considered my options and kept the flight robe on. It was unlikely Roy was going to have time to be amorous before his turn at the controls. I got back into bed and snuggled next to him. I woke up briefly when he got up for his shift, but otherwise, I slept soundly.

  Everyone ate breakfast and dinner together on the Hummingbird. It was Roy’s rule, and I liked it. We were a family. Sure, we were put together from the cast-offs and fugitives of the galaxy, but we were a family nonetheless.

  Either my bugging them had gotten Roy and Doven to talk, or they’d both moved past the issue, because they seemed at ease with each other today.

  Which was good, because we had to jump to the Pollisystem. Not all solar systems were named for one of their worlds, but Polliworld was the only inhabited planet its sun had, so had scored the name.

  We strapped in. Sometimes Ciarissa and I went to the cockpit with Roy and Doven, and sometimes we didn’t. Today we didn’t. I wasn’t sure if she’d picked up everything that had gone on yesterday and last night, but with the others around, it wasn’t the time to ask her. She was dreamy-looking and serene as always, as her white-blonde hair floated around her head. If there was a problem, Ciarissa wasn’t allowing it to affect her mood.

  “Crew, prepare for jump,” Roy said over the intercom.

  It’s great to say “prepare,” but no matter how many times we did it, the jumps to hyperspace were always tough.

  The first few moments of a jump made you feel compressed, and all you could see was inky blackness, whether you were looking out a window or not. If Roy or Doven calibrated even a bit incorrectly, this would be the last thing any of us would experience and we’d die in suffocating blackness.

  Just when you thought you couldn’t take the feeling of suspended death any longer, your stomach turned inside out and back again. This fun feeling proved the jump was successful.

  All windows, including that of the cockpit, were blacked out to prevent anyone from being able to see what we were flying past. It was great to say “no peeking” but, species nature being what it was, it was much harder to enforce.

  Because of the ship’s rate of speed as it went into hyperspace, if anyone watched the star systems and gods alone knew what else go past, they’d either go blind or crazy. Someone in the past who’d possessed both technological know-how and a goodly helping of common sense had created a simple sensor that automatically blacked out
all viewing portals once a spaceship jumped to hyperspace.

  The rest of the flight was fairly nondescript. If I really concentrated I could feel a little extra compression—nothing like the initial jump, more like I was carrying an extra ten pounds on top of my skin.

  There were a few species in the galaxy that were so delicate that they could never travel via hyperspace because of this pressure. Taking the sick or injured into hyperspace was also iffy—most of the time it wasn’t an issue, but because illness and injury made a being more sensitive, hyperspace could sometimes cause additional health problems.

  Most of us shrugged it off and ignored it because the downsides of hyperspace were far outweighed by the advantages of being able to travel all over the galaxy without the trip taking entire lifetimes.

  As with our sleep times, Roy insisted on either himself or Doven remaining at the controls. Today they both stayed in the cockpit. I decided not to wander up to see what was going on—hopefully things were fine and they were making up with each other. If they were fighting, we’d hear it sooner or later.

  Instead, I headed for the engine room to see what Willy was up to. Willy was the only true Earther on board—Roy and Kyle were Martian, and so right up there on the popularity rolls with shape shifters and Quillian Shamans. Willy was also the eldest member of the crew—presuming Dr. Wufren was telling the truth, which was never a safe bet.

  Willy had done a lot and seen a lot. He’d traveled from one side of the galaxy to the other more times than the rest of us put together. He was our ship’s engineer and chief mechanic, though Bullfrog could also cover if needed, and Kyle was learning how to do these jobs as well.

  I was unsurprised, therefore, to find Kyle with Willy in the Hummingbird’s belly.

  “Hey, DeeDee, what’re you doing here?” Kyle asked from under what might have been a carbine, might have been a drive shaft, or might have been something else entirely. I didn’t shift into inanimate objects, so I’d never given the ship’s mechanics much attention. That’s what Willy, Bullfrog and, apparently, Kyle were for.