Chandeliers of rainbow-colored pinpoints twinkled to light the room. Hangings of monochrome plush covered the walls in thick folds to deaden noise. The roulette table in the center was untenanted; the croupier, a sultry woman in a fishnet top, held her rake as she watched the poker game. Half those present were staff, but like the patrons they were now merely spectators around the poker table.
The top cards were face down. Klimov looked at his and said, “Up twenty.”
He deliberately added stacks of gold markers, five and five and five and five, to the considerable amount already on the table before him. He had three queens showing. Bertram had the nine and ten of hearts and the seven of clubs.
Daniel scanned the room quickly, making a keep-back gesture to Hogg with his left hand. Only high rollers and the house staff had access to this sanctum. None of the spacers escorting Klimov and Bertram were present, nor did the other gamblers have servants with them. Two heavies stood at the stairs to the lower floors. Although they were well-groomed, they weren’t there to serve drinks.
The Alliance officer glowered and took a fierce drag on his cigar, making the tip glow like a demon’s eye. He glanced at the palm of his left hand, seemingly empty, and said, “Yes, all right. I call.”
Bertram shoved out chips with an angry, nervous motion. Some of his bet was in gold, some in violet, and the rest in a scatter of lesser colors. Daniel didn’t know what the denominations were, but judging from the way everybody watched the poker table he could venture a guess.
The dealer’s hands fluttered over the final bet, taking the house percentage. The motion was as swift as sunlight glancing on the ripples of a pond.
“So,” said Klimov equably. He turned over his top card, a five of clubs.
“So!” said Bertram. He snapped up the jack of spades and the eight of diamonds, then leaned back and took a long drag on his cigar. “My straight beats your three queens!”
Klimov turned up his hole card, the fourth queen.
The Alliance captain gave a disbelieving gasp. He stared into his left palm again, then jumped to his feet. “That’s not a queen, it’s the ace of spades!” he shouted. “You think you’ll cheat me, you hog-fucking hayseed?”
Bertram reached under the blouse of his tunic and started to come out with a gun. Spectators scrambled back like roaches startled by a light. Daniel went through them like a ball scattering ten-pins.
“Sissies to me!” he shouted, catching Bertram’s gunhand and elbow. He bent the wrist backward till the gun came loose and Bertram’s call, “Alliance! Alliance!” turned to a scream.
The toughs at the door had either missed Bertram’s gun or been paid to miss it. Now they jumped out of the way instead of trying to stop the solid mass of Alliance spacers coming up the stairs. There were more than twenty, that Daniel could see in the brief glance he got as he lifted Bertram over his head and hurled him down the stairwell.
“Get your fucking ass outa the way, master!” Hogg shouted. Daniel threw himself to the side. Woetjans and half a dozen more Sissies went by and with an explosive grunt—
Good God almighty, they had the roulette table on its side! A thousand pounds of baize and dark, lustrous wood if it weren’t twice that heavy!
—sent their huge missile into the faces of the Alliance spacers trapped in the stairwell.
Lights hidden in the curtain valences came on, flooding the room brilliantly. The last of the dozen Sissies were coming through the back door, holding clubs and looking for somebody to fight. There weren’t any hostiles left at the moment. A doorman who’d stumbled into Dasi while trying to dodge the roulette table might need surgery to remove his balls from his chest cavity, though.
“Hogg, where’s my—” Daniel began, but before he got the rest of the question out of his mouth Hogg tossed him the commo helmet he’d stuffed into a cargo pocket. Hogg’s trousers and loose tunics could hold—and often had held, to Daniel’s certain knowledge from when he was a boy on Bantry—whole coveys of game birds without a soul realizing the fact by glancing at the hick with the slack-jawed grin.