Dark Sky (Keiko) Read Free Page A

replied, not without a hint of mischief.
    ‘Well, I seem to have an abundance of cash,’ Drift said, getting to his feet. ‘How about I use some of it to buy you a drink and test that theory?’ She might have quietly sneered at his clothes when they’d first met, but Drift wasn’t the sort to hold grudges. Well, not when the other person had the kind of features you’d expect to see in a fifty-foot hologram advertising make-up, anyway.
    She opened her mouth as if to respond, but then something in her face changed. She composed her features and took a step backwards. ‘Perhaps another time.’
    Drift blinked in surprise. He’d been almost sure she was going to …
    A hand landed on his shoulder. Startled, and not a little annoyed, he looked around to see which of his crew had spotted him and come over to interrupt his flirting.
    ‘Excuse me, sir,’ said the bald Grand House security guard, two of his colleagues standing at his shoulder. ‘I must ask you to come with us.’

A NEW PLAYER

    ‘EXCUSE
ME
?!’ DRIFT found his voice rising more than he’d have liked, and not one part of it was a result of play-acting the drunk. ‘I think there must be some mistake.’ He turned back towards the beauty in the cream dress but she’d already disappeared, presumably not wanting to risk being caught up in whatever this was.
    ‘No mistake, sir,’ the guard said, his expression not shifting by a jot. ‘Please come this way.’
    With three guards in close proximity, Drift didn’t really have an option. He pocketed his chips, ruining the line of his suit in doing so. ‘Can you at least tell me what this is about? I can assure you, I won that game fair and square.’ Their little group garnered several curious glances from players at tables as he was shepherded across the floor, and he briefly wondered how many games they’d mildly disrupted before his mind went back to windmilling through the possibilities. Was this some sort of trick played by the person in the sarong? But what purpose could it serve now the game was over?’
    ‘I apologise, sir,’ the first guard said quietly from his left, ‘but Mr Orlov has told me to ask if you will accept an invitation to meet with him.’
    Drift didn’t exactly stop dead, but he certainly stumbled a little as his train of thought was thoroughly derailed. ‘Wait … Mr Orlov? Mr
Sergei
Orlov? The owner?’
    ‘Yes sir,’ the guard replied neutrally.
    Drift chewed the inside of his cheek for a second, the mild pain helping him to focus his thoughts slightly. Sergei Orlov, owner of the Grand House, was what you got when a gangster was so respectable he barely counted as a gangster anymore. He was a businessman with enterprises that stretched far beyond the establishment where his family had first made their name, and was probably immune from ever being arrested, even without the fact that he had the slickest lawyers around. If Sergei Orlov’s businesses started to struggle, then a third of the system’s population might find themselves economically disadvantaged in one way or another.
    Sergei Orlov was very much the big fish in the New Samaran pond, and by comparison Ichabod Drift was … some sort of water beetle, perhaps? Maybe a fly larvae. Old Earth biology had never been his strongpoint.
    ‘Just so I’m clear on this point,’ he said slowly, looking sidelong at his escort and with a sinking feeling that he already knew the answer, ‘is this invitation an “invitation” or an
invitation
?’
    ‘I assure you sir,’ the guard replied, ‘you are free to choose whether to see Mr Orlov or not. If you do, we will take you to him. If not, you are free to go. However, he suggests that seeing him would be more profitable.’
    Drift digested that and thought furiously. His first instinct was to cut and run, to bring his crew’s stay on New Samara to an abrupt end and get the hell away from whatever had brought him to the attention of Sergei Orlov. Was it simply a