Probability
Cast
Organizations
Locations
Alice lit a cigarette and lay back in a leather chair, welcoming whatever effect the smoke would have. She’d found a room with windows looking out at space’s emptiness. A welcome reprieve from Tavari’s lectures, Josephine’s mothering, and Maria’s fretting. If brief.
The door opened and slow, intentional footsteps heralded Ryker’s entry. The captain-apparent away from the bridge. His coat partially concealed the armor underneath, but not the scuffed insignia of the Unchained Armada across his chest.
“There’s no smoking on my ship, Alice,” he said as he sat across from her and examined the pack on the end table between them. The text was in Legionnaire, making it anyone’s guess what was in it.
“Not sure it’s your ship, Ryker.” She took a drag and blew the smoke in his direction. “You owe me, after all. Or have you forgotten about the ship you stole from Parala?”
“I wouldn’t have had to steal it if you hadn’t shorted us on pay,” he argued. “Besides, a corvette for a free merchant is hardly a fair trade.”
“Fairer with four years of interest, considering NK247 is still in your fleet.” And its new crew no less annoying.
“Fairer is not fair.”
“Why not let the cards decide, then?” she reached into her pocket and pulled out a deck she’d found.
He eyed the box in her hand. “I have a rule against gambling with precogs.”
“You deal, then.” She tossed the deck over. He snatched it from the air and paused only a second before opening the box to shuffle its contents.
He’d come far from being Tavari’s tagalong. Alice met him seven or eight years back, when Tavari did occasional work for Parala. Even then Ryker had his goal to establish himself and his planet on the galactic stage. He got less pay for the job because of the problems his bullheadedness caused.
It wasn’t until he stole from Parala that Alice thought he might actually stand a chance. Now he exploited a loophole in Protectorate law to run a mercenary group off an uncharted planet. While the Armada barely held a candle to the Invincibles, she respected anyone screwing with the Protectorate.
He finished dealing and Alice glanced at her hand. The same bad start she expected, but any hand could win if you knew your opponent. Judging by how closely Ryker watched her every move, he knew that, as well. Except he hadn’t seen this game play out five times already.
“So,” she said, playing her first card. “Who’s at the helm while you’re goofing off?”
“The Syndicate kid is. He’s not bad, considering. Could do a lot if given the right opportunities.”
She tapped the end of her cigarette, letting the ash drop to the floor. “Never thought Ryker Derrix would take on a protégé.”
“Hardly.” He added a card to the board. The same one as always. “I don’t have the patience and won’t have the time. But I sure as hell could use someone like him in the Armada.”
“Things that bad?”
“Between the Legion and politics, we’ve…had setbacks. We’ll never get anywhere losing people like this.” His jaw tightened and he flicked the corner of the cards in his hand.
Alice heard a familiar frustration in his voice. Her band of pirates was far looser than his Armada, but she still felt responsible for them. Each death was a failure in her leadership.
“It’s going to get worse,” she warned.
“Yeah? Your psi-brain tell you that?”
She threw down her next card, watching it land exactly as she had seen it, half-covering the rest of the cards. Ryker sat and watched her with a too-intense stare until she spoke to break the silence he controlled.
“I never wanted more than a minute,” she said, “I could fuck with people without getting shit for it. Nobody noticed, nobody cared. Now I got a fucking year. What am I supposed to do with that?” She took another drag to relax before she ended up throwing something.
“Be strategic?” Ryker shifted the card on the board so it wouldn’t cover others and placed his own beside it. Alice hardly paid attention to what it was.
“How can you be strategic about a million futures flooding your brain? People know I can see this far, they start to think I have answers or can fix their problems.”
Even Ryker’s people on this ship kept asking her ‘What if we do this?’ ‘What happens then?’ They had no idea the restraint it took to not claw their eyes out.
“And you can’t control it?” Ryker asked.
“Barely.” She dropped another card on the table.
“Barely?”
“You’ll see. If you live that long.”
“How long?”
Smoke escaped with her next words. “About four hours.” She stared out the window and pretended not to notice Ryker pausing mid-play. There was some pleasure in burdening someone else with the knowledge they all might die today. Escaping the battleship was the easy part.
“Well, at least I’ll face that fate in my own ship.” He placed one last card on the board before dropping his remaining hand.
Alice frowned and sat up to examine the cards closer. His plays diverged from her timelines a few turns ago and she hadn’t noticed.
“Thanks for the game,” Ryker said as he tossed the empty card box back to her. She caught it, but said nothing as he stood up and left. Ash from her dwindling cigarette dropped into her lap.
He’d won despite her every vision saying he wouldn’t. Did it mean anything aside from precog was even worse than she thought? If it didn’t help her win a card game, what good was it?
She stamped out her cigarette on the table and took one last look into the void before leaving to prepare. Even if she got the outcome wrong, the game still happened. There was no stopping what came next.
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