Advertisement
Guest User

Untitled

a guest
Sep 16th, 2014
204
0
Never
Not a member of Pastebin yet? Sign Up, it unlocks many cool features!
text 4.47 KB | None | 0 0
  1. Hiker tosses her cards face-down onto the table. The dealer slides them into the muck, drags her chips in. She flicks the end of her cigarette onto the ground.
  2. "Yeah, maybe I'll call that one another time, pal," she says, sticking the cigarette back into the corner of her mouth and stacking eleven thousand Mali-Faso dollars in front of her. It reaches about to the top of her hands as they rest on the edge of the table, these are the old bills, the ones that now amount to something like a four hundred forty-fifth of a nuyen. The sun glints off of a pair of sunglasses on the table, through the slats of the mostly-closed window on the other side of the room. The humidity is strangling, but Hiker is used to it. After two years of it, the weather patterns lose their bite.
  3. The dealer button moves, a fake silver coin, and Dean throws two more cards to each player with a lazy spin. Hiker glances first to the other players, in card order. Pereira likes his hand, Johnson doesn't, neither does Falloon. Dean is the tricky one, as always. Hiker waits for him to give her more information. Pereira calls, Johnson and Falloon fold. Hiker glances at her cards and checks, she was in with the blind. Dean pauses, looks towards his chips just perceptibly, then calls.
  4. Three cards come, and Hiker knows what she expects from Dean now, but her reads on him have been shaky at best this game. Dean knows how the game works, but so does Pereira, and Pereira isn't as good. Dean, full name Michael Dean, is an intelligence man, here on what Hiker assumes has to be a duty that's been summed up in such pleasant terms as "find informants and deal with them". Hiker knows what he does, and what he's used to doing, because where Hiker's job involves military targets his involves civilians. Where her tools are a rifle and a well-camoflaged position, his are a pair of pliers, a chair, and a length of rope. Torture's an ugly word, corporate prefers "enhanced interrogation". Not that it matters, the word could come out that MET 2000 has been punting babies to replace clay pidgeons and the media wouldn't touch the story. MET is well-funded, and they pay the right people.
  5. Dean bets. This could either be a bet to try and get more money into the pot, or he could be trying to force her and Pereira off of their hands by intimidating them. She doubts it's a bluff, but it's not outside the realm of possibility for him to be representing a slightly better hand than he has. Pereira folds. Hiker raises, whatever Dean has it's not the best hand, and she has the second-best. Dean calls.
  6. Pereira mutters something about bullshit. Hiker doesn't even glance over towards him, her eyes are focused on the table and her opponent. It's supposed to be a friendly game, but Dean and Hiker never talk until their cards are out of play. A card comes. More money into the pot. Pereira's the kind of player who knows enough to play, but not enough to make money. He seems to care about the game about as long as he's at the table, and forget about it later. He's been out into the field with Hiker, a situation Dean hasn't been in yet. Only once, and then he'd told her, "The guys told me the lady snipers were all freaks in bed, and us hackers are the ones who get in there 'cause of these field recons." Hiker couldn't disagree less, but she gave Pereira a look that sucked the soul out of him. The next thing he said was, "Figures I'd get the gay one." Hiker considers it proven that everyone in the mercenary business is an asshole. She doesn't consider herself to be an exception.
  7. The river card comes. Hiker bets, Dean pauses. He could be thinking a number of things, but Hiker bets on one. Dean raises, Hiker smiles and re-raises. Dean pauses again, then folds. Hiker mucks her cards and stacks up seventeen thousand Mali-Faso dollars.
  8. "Wait, what'd you have?" Dean asks.
  9. "What'd you think I had?"
  10. "Ace three?"
  11. Ace three would have been the best hand, it wasn't Hiker's. Hiker just smiles. Another hand is dealt, then another. Hiker ends up with a little more money than she started with. Not significantly so, these aren't nuyen, but enough to make her think she's won. Hiker has a third beer of the evening.
  12. The next day, Dean leaves for some village, probably to torture a couple people in the hopes that they know something. Hiker is assigned to assist in a raid. Go in, blow shit up, steal shit, leave. Land-based piracy, glorified plunder. But these are the popular missions with the boys. Hiker walks the six miles to the remote target with the group of twenty.
Advertisement
Add Comment
Please, Sign In to add comment
Advertisement