chapter 158
POV: Sam
There was the thump of the ship setting down. A few moments later, we felt not the ship’s artificial gravity turning on, but the station’s. Outside, we could see red flashing lights, and slowly we started to hear the alarms, as now that the hangar doors were closed, air was being pumped back in.
It was strange not to be wearing our full battle gear, but we all still had the sidearm. While this station had proper rule of law, it was also located deep inside a red zone, meaning everyone here was all hard and seasoned. People like that would never truly leave themselves completely defenceless, so the station never even tried.
“You ready?” I asked my brother, a bit nervous about what was to follow. He didn't answer back but gave me a small nod. It was nice to see that he was also a bit nervous.
When we reached the cargo bay, both the front and back ramps were down. Hundreds of drones were busy flying about, moving resources around. Outside, we saw Lola managing the drones that were helping build out a manufacturing area.
The berth we were in was about two times bigger than the ship. Captain explained it was because we needed that extra space to manufacturing all the necessary components for the hard light turrets.
Captain was currently gone, and so was Bob, so they could buy the necessary materials needed for the ship’s upgrade all at once, because if they purchased it over time, the price would rise way too much.
“Lola, we’re leaving,” I half yelled to her.
“Don’t get yourself into trouble,” she half yelled back.
Both of us walked out of the berth, going through security checks that were conducted by our own squad members. Captain wasn’t happy about the station’s security competence. We would have also needed to pay the rate the station offered. Fortunately, we had the manpower to spare.
“FH, thank you for the recommendations on where to go,” I said to her through the bond network.
“Not a problem, also we can now communicate through regular means as well, I finished setting up secure channels.”
She sounded quite busy, but I guess that made sense. She had access to a whole new net with hundreds of years of history. She was doing her best to dig through all of it to find any interesting information.
FH had also been quite happy during our trip around the asteroid belt, as she finally had a lot of time to browse the quantum net. When we were in FTL, it was impossible to access the quantum net, so she felt quite bored when we were doing a long haul.
When we reached outside, we found ourselves in a grimy hallway where the only things being maintained properly were the rails for cargo transport and the lights.
We had a long walk ahead of us, as we really didn't want to spend the extra credits to get ourselves a vehicle to move about.
“Perhaps next time we’ll get the vehicle. It’s novel right now to walk like this, but I can see it getting… well, not exactly boring, but you get what I mean?”
“I think what makes it worse is this hallway. I mean, we’re leaving footprints behind because of the dirt. They really should do a better job at maintaining this place.”
My brother was right about that, but I'm guessing they have someone constantly cleaning with some sort of vehicle. It probably just takes them months, if not years, to circle back to this particular hallway. From outside, we could easily see the web of hallways; there were so many that I bet you could easily get lost.
That couldn’t happen to us, thanks to FH’s map that was guiding us to our destination. After a couple of hours of walking, taking many turns, we reached a hallway that was obviously being maintained properly.
As soon as we made it there, we could see others walking about, unlike the emptiness from before. It was strange. Everyone looked at us when we got close, but it wasn’t to look at us in disgust because we were robots, but to assess our threat, or just curiously looking at a species they had not seen before.
My eyes met Dean’s as we both realised we were no longer objects who were war machines for someone else to use. The captain had given us something more, made us into something beyond what we were.
When I now looked around, the world seemed different, less rigid, less judging. We could walk about without having to worry about every single person judging us for what we were.
I noticed that my spine seemed to straighten a bit, and I looked down less. It was like an invisible weight was lifted from my shoulders, one that I didn’t even know I was carrying. When I looked towards my brother, I saw my own feelings reflected in him.
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We made it to the metro station and waited there, just observing until it finally arrived. The doors opened up, and it was easy to see the age of this transporter of people. It had served for many decades, perhaps even centuries.
The doors opened up but not as smoothly as you would expect, but still without any problems. I was about to step forward when I noticed that everyone else outside was waiting. It made sense, as the ones on board were let out, and only then others started to walk in.
There was seating and plenty of empty seats, but not in a way my brother and I could sit side by side, so we just stepped a bit further in and grabbed hold of ropes suspended from the ceiling. Instead of having to walk for another few hours, we had to ride the metro for a few dozen minutes.
It stopped quite regularly, and each time, people left, and others came aboard. We had been to plenty of places with our old master, but all of them had a species that was dominant there. This was the first place we had been to where there didn’t seem to be dominant species.
That being said, basically 99% seemed to be humanoid. That was a bit strange, as normally that percentage is lower.
“Have you noticed it’s basically only humanoid here?”
“Took you a bit. Here, I’ll send you the information FH sent me.”
It seems that about half a century ago, there was a power struggle. A lot of the species that weren’t humanoid had joined the other side. The conflict wasn’t because the humanoid species wanted dominance, but simply because there were disagreements on how to govern.
It just happened to be a coincidence that basically all the species that weren’t humanoid decided to support the other side, though there were some exceptions. It seemed to have been a truly brutal war, with the station nearly falling from the internal conflict.
There were no limits on who could come here, so the only thing stopping this place from returning to the normal species distribution percentages was time.
“Well, I didn’t expect that,” I said to Dean, who easily agreed.
Dean was about to say something when we got a ping from our map. It seemed that we were approaching our stop. Getting out, we found ourselves on what looked like streets carved out from stone.
Each building only had doors and windows carved out; everything else was still made of the same stone that the entire asteroid was made out of. Up on the ceiling, there was lighting to keep everything lit, and most of the buildings had some sort of advertising lit with neon light.
Soon, we were surrounded by people moving on the street. Every once in a while, we needed to move out of the way as vehicles went past. From what we could see, there weren’t any traffic laws besides the one to get out of the way of moving vehicles, but most weren’t even in a hurry to do that.
This was quite a strange sight. It was truly nice to just be part of the crowd.
“Hey Dean, it's a shop selling weapons. Should we check it out?”
“Wouldn’t hurt.”
When we walked inside, the atmosphere changed completely. While the outside wall was made of rock, everything inside was made of metal and concrete. There were many shelves filled with different attachments and bullet types, and the back wall was filled with guns.
We only faintly recognised some that were the most common patterns in the Galaxy, but even those were modified, as each place usually made their own changes. We didn’t recognise any famous manufacturers, but some of these guns seemed quite well-made.
“Brother, do you think that captain will someday become a famous manufacturer?” Dean asked me, and I took a moment to think about it while testing this silver-looking handgun that was obviously meant for a hand with more fingers than mine.
“Only way that doesn’t happen is if he doesn’t sell anything. But knowing Bob, he wouldn’t miss the opportunity to make extra credits.”
Both of us smiled at that as we continued to check out what was for sale. After about 10 minutes, we started to get unkind looks from the shop owner, as I’m pretty sure he figured out that we weren’t planning on buying anything here.
Soon we were back on the street, walking with the crowd following the map guide FH gave us. We did a few more unplanned stops, checking out different stores, when we finally reached our destination.
The street had been widened around here, making it more like a plaza. One of the larger establishments here had a huge neon sign advertising gambling. We would need to take it slow, as we weren’t really familiar with the popular gambling games of this station, but it was going to be exciting to learn.
We walked inside, and the noise of the different machines hit us, all of them promising victory and disappointment, all just a button push or a lever pull away. Those games of complete chance weren’t what we were after, so we walked deeper in.
It didn’t take too long to walk past what seemed like endless rows of gambling machines and see hundreds of tables. Some tables seemed quite simple, while others were obviously purpose-built for specific games.
Each one seemed quite interesting, but only time would tell if they were built purely on luck or if they were games of skill. Of course, a little bit of luck would be necessary, as games of pure skill were a bit boring.
“Let’s head that way, there seems to be more people around those tables.”
As we walked, we observed the games being played. The current ones seemed a bit too luck-based, so we continued to move. There were also side rooms, and one seemed pretty big, so we decided to see what was there.
As we walked closer, a familiar noise reached us. There were plenty of card games in the Galaxy, with each deck having a different sound as they were being shuffled. There seemed to be hundreds of shuffling decks in that room, all of which sounded so familiar.
As we walked in, there were easily over 100 tables in this large room, each one having around eight people playing some card game. Dean nudged me and pointed towards the sign to our left.
The Second Annual Texas Hold’em Grand Tournament.
Underneath it was a registration table, and before I noticed, we were standing in front of it.
“Hello, would you be interested in signing up for the tournament? A sign-in is 10,000 credits, with each rebuy after it costing twice as much as the previous one. All of it goes into a shared pool distributed between the top ten.”
“How is this game here?” I heard myself ask, not really believing what I was saying.
The person behind the table laughed gently. “Why wouldn’t we have the biggest growing new gambling game in the Galaxy? Its popularity seems unstoppable, and I would bet you that there is not one single reputable gambling establishment without it in the civilised and uncivilised parts of the Milky Way Galaxy.”
We only needed to share one glance before both of us signed up.
“Probably not the best if we played at the same table,” I said to my brother, who quickly agreed.
“Should we notify Captain?” I asked my brother before we separated.
“Yeah, go ahead. I think I see some rich kid basically constantly going all-in, and there’s an empty spot. I’m heading that way.”
Before I could say anything back, he was gone. He was not running but walked as quickly as he could towards that table.
“FH, can you connect me to the captain?”
“Secure connection is established. Go ahead.”
“Captain, it’s Sam. We found a Texas Hold’em tournament.”
There was a long silence before I heard the captain’s voice.
“I’ve been replaying what you said, but each time it seems like you said that there’s a Texas Hold’em tournament?”
“Yes, and quite a big one. They have fancy tournament-grade cards and everything. Seems like a really big event. And it seems like this particular game has become quite popular in the galaxy?”
“Thank you, Sam. FH, please send me the location of that place. Sam, I will be joining you soon.”
The call cut off. The captain wasn’t the biggest gambler, but I bet he wanted to join because it would feel like he was back on Earth. My attention was thrown to someone heavily striking a table and then furiously walking away.
Seems like I have found a table to join. The dealer saw me approach and gave me a nod. I sat in the empty spot. I would be dealt in the next round, so I used the time to properly arrange my chips and then started observing my opponents.
One of them was looking at me quite intensely. Then recognition seemed to blossom on his face.
“No way… are you human? The ones that invented this game?”
That silenced everyone and even halted the dealer’s movements.
“It was invented way before my time,” I answered, and what followed was quite embarrassing as the game was momentarily halted while everyone thanked me, some patting my shoulder while others shook my hand.
Not everyone did that, but most here seemed to truly love this game, and so did I.