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  GAMBLER

  S.J. Bryant

  Copyright 2015 Saffron Bryant

  Published by Saffron Bryant at Smashwords

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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  To everyone who challenges the past and strives for the future.

  http://www.saffronbryant.com/free-books

  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 t
o 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.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Tabryn was a converted desert planet which, centuries before, had been founded by refugees and criminals. Unfortunately, it hadn't evolved much since. Even more unfortunately, Nova had been forced to grow up there.

  The capital city that had been Nova's home for many years shared the planet's name. The rich and powerful lived in the small inner city where drug lords and the mafia ruled the streets, and wealthy business people spent their holidays. It was a wonder to behold.

  Surrounding the jewel which was Tabryn's inner city was the dirt and squalor which made up the rest of the planet. In those outer reaches, away from the shine and glitter of inner-Tabryn, drug abuse was almost as high as malnutrition and violence. Limited jobs resulting from the planet's failing infrastructure meant that there was little hope for improvement for the citizens of outer-Tabryn. So they turned to the underbelly for the happiness they couldn't find in real life.

  In the end, all that resulted was a huge number of orphans with no one to take care of them. Most of their stories went the same as their parents, and the same as it would for their children; a life of cold, loneliness, and hunger, ending with an overdose that would take away the pain.

  Nova had been one of the lucky ones. She had managed to get food from a shelter that struggled with the swarms of hungry children. She'd still had to fight for her survival on more than one occasion; at thirteen, she had killed a man who had tried to take advantage of her as she slept in a cardboard box.

  Nova's memory skipped forward.

  She walked across the hard red dirt. The bottoms of her trouser legs were perpetually stained brown from the dust. The air was dry and hot. It burned her nose and throat as she breathed in, but it was the only air she'd ever known. One hand was clasped around the cred-stick in her pocket; the other clutched a knife, hidden under her jacket.

  She was eighteen. Three years fighting in the Pits had given her a stack of credits, more than she'd ever seen in one place. She knew exactly what she was going to do with it; she was going to buy her way out. There was a whole universe to explore and she'd be damned if she was going to waste her life on the backwater which was Tabryn.

  Once she had found her place in the Pits and made friends there, she'd been happy for a few years. But now that was over. Tabryn was a vacuum determined to suck the very life out of every resident.

  But why did it have to take Caila?

  She should have been prepared really. The signs were all there. She knew as well as anyone that Caila was spiralling down into a drug-addled haze, thanks mostly to the popular street drug Zine. She was so high most of the time that she couldn't even blink. The worst days were when she couldn't breathe. Nova would wake up to the sound of struggled gasps. She would run to Caila's side and find her gasping for air, fighting against her lungs which were no longer under her control.

  Nova would sit there for hours, manually pumping air into Caila's lungs with the artificial respirator. When she eventually came round, Caila would cry and wail. She'd promise Nova that she'd stop now; no more drugs. Of course, that only lasted until the next pay check arrived.

  So many times Nova wanted to leave, to get out. It was Caila's own fault after all. She chose to keep taking the drugs. She could have said no; she could have stayed clean. But despite that, something kept Nova there. She couldn't abandon her friend. They'd grown up in the same orphanage, fought the same battles. Nova just happened to have won more than Caila.

  But last night Caila lost her final battle.

  Nova was woken for the third time that week by ragged breathing. She ran to Caila's side, the respirator already in hand. She put the tube down Caila's throat, ignoring Caila's gagging reflex. Nova pumped gently on the ball at the end, forcing air down into Caila's throat. This time instead of recycling air, a spurt of red came out.

  The crimson liquid poured out of the end, onto the floor, and over Nova's hand. The blood was laced with green and black. Chunks of meat floated amongst it. The smell was overpowering, a mixture of rotting meat and toxic fumes.

  Nova stifled a scream and pulled the respirator out of Caila's throat. What had she done? Nova called for help but the night remained silent.

  Caila's glassy eyes stared, unseeing. Blood seeped out of the side of her mouth, bubbling as she struggled to breathe
.

  Nova tried everything she could think of to save the other girl but it was to no avail. Roxanne, the woman who ran the shelter, explained later that eventually Zine causes the lungs and heart to literally burst. There was nothing left of her internal organs by the time Nova had arrived. Her body was just going through its final motions, and now Caila was dead.

  Nova shook the memory from her head. She couldn't stay on Tabryn a moment longer. Everything reminded her of the cesspool of drugs, disease, and poverty that it was. She had to get out, to get free of it all. She'd travel into the stars; see the rest of the galaxy for herself. Tabryn couldn't have her.

  So it was that Nova sauntered to the used ship yard with money and knife in hand.

  An old man bent over a rusted ship, spanner in his hand as he cursed and grunted under the hot sun. His face was bright red, a stark contrast to his white hair and stringy beard. Desert dust stained his clothes red, intermixed with oil and grime.

  "Hail," Nova said as she stepped up to the ship.

  The man cursed once more, turned the spanner, and then lifted his head to stare at her. He squinted and his mouth turned down.

  "I'm not a charity. Get out of here," he said, waving his hand and returning to the ship.

  "I want to buy a ship," Nova said.

  "Look, girl. I'd warrant you don't have enough to buy this spanner, let alone a ship." While keeping his attention on the ship, he held up the spanner and waved it in the air.

  Nova's face went red and her blood boiled. Her hands clenched tighter around her money and the knife, not knowing which she'd end up using today.

  "I have money," she said.

  The mechanic turned to squint at her again. He frowned but stood straighter, laying the spanner down on the side of the ship.

  "What are you after?" he asked.

  "Something cheap. Something simple."

  "How cheap?"