Dark Sky (Keiko) Read Free Page B

velvet-lined trap, enticing him with soft words and financial rewards instead of disrupting the House’s atmosphere by having him dragged away? Playing on his ego by claiming that Sergei Orlov wished to see him personally when that was about as likely as the planet’s twin moons dancing a hornpipe if he played the flute?
    He sighed. If someone in authority, be that Orlov or no, wanted him removed from the House floor then he would be removed. He might as well play along on the off chance that this was actually as benign as it sounded. Besides, if it genuinely
was
Orlov who wanted to see him then he was intrigued despite himself.
    He gave the bald guard his best smile. ‘Lead on, then.’
    The guard nodded to the others, who melted unobtrusively away. Drift blinked his one natural eye in surprise, a motion his remaining escort apparently picked up on.
    ‘Mr Orlov wished to give the impression of you being removed from our establishment when you left the table,’ he explained, extending a hand in front of him to direct Drift towards an elevator situated in a curve in the wall, ‘but there is no need for my colleagues now.’
    ‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ Drift muttered, falling into step alongside him, then adding, ‘said Alice.’
    ‘I beg your pardon?’
    ‘Mmm? Oh, nothing.’ Drift waved a hand dismissively.
No one appreciates the classics anymore.
    The elevator shaft was as curved as the rest of New Samara’s architecture, with a mainly oval footprint that was flattened at the narrow ends. The guard entered a security code on a pad, shifting his body to block Drift’s view, before pressing the floor button. Drift supposed that this was to prevent just anyone from dropping in to see Sergei Orlov, then bit his cheek again at the realisation that yes, perhaps he
was
about to see the Grand House’s owner. What were the odds?
    Well, he was in a casino. Whatever the odds were, they were almost certainly against him.
    The elevator rose, passing through two other floors judging by the display above the doors, before slowing to a halt with a
ping
.
    ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ Drift’s companion muttered, seconds before the doors slid aside and he was confronted by a short, narrow corridor and two more guards, each pointing a pistol at him.
    ‘Well, this is depressingly familiar,’ Drift sighed. His own guns were back in his hotel room, since the Grand House took a very dim view of patrons going armed onto the gaming floors. However, to his shock the two guards holstered their weapons after a second’s scrutiny and stood back, one against each wall.
    ‘Sir?’ The guard beside him stepped forwards, quirking the fingers of one hand to motion Drift to follow him. After a moment of checking that he was certain this wasn’t some elaborate trick, Drift did so.
    ‘Roman? Did he come?’
    The voice was rich, with a faint burring of the initial ‘r’ but not an extravagant roll. The Russian accent was strong, but it was a statement of identity rather than an inability to adapt to a different language’s vowels and consonants.
    ‘Yes, sir,’ the man called Roman replied, stopping at the point that the corridor opened into a room and extending one hand to invite Drift forwards.
    ‘I suspect you already knew that I came,’ Drift said, stepping out, ‘or you’d have probably said that in Russian …’
    He tailed off, impressed despite himself. He wasn’t quite sure what he’d been expecting, but being shown into Orlov’s personal penthouse suite certainly wasn’t one of them. This was the top floor of the main casino, narrower than the rest of the building below but still considerably larger than the entirety of the
Jonah
, Drift’s
Carcharodon
-class shuttle currently sitting in New Samara’s spaceport. He experienced a burning moment of envy at the opulence and size, and briefly wondered exactly why he’d spent most of his adult life in the relatively cramped conditions on board spacecraft instead of