“Freaky!” Rodger said with a chuckle, his bushy brows raised over his glasses.
The smile on his face slowly turned to a frown.
“Can’t do it,” he finally said, tossing his cards into the muck pile with Andrew’s.
Weaver eyed Magnolia. “Just you and me now.”
She brushed a lock of electric blue hair back over her ear, trying not to let him get under her skin. It was part of the game. Everyone was a prick when playing cards, even nice guys like Weaver.
“Let’s see another card,” she said.
Ty peeled one from the deck and slid it to Weaver. Then he sent the next to Magnolia. She waited to check her card, focusing first on Weaver’s face. There was no squint this time—only the hard eyes of a man who had lost everything in life except his honor. For the commander, the game wasn’t just about credits. It was about being the best. After X sacrificed himself back in Hades, Weaver had taken his place as the top Hell Diver on the Hive. He didn’t lose easily.
But neither did Magnolia.
The memories of that last dive with X were still raw. She had grown up without a dad, and ten years ago she had lost two of the men she respected most: first her own commander, Cruise, and then X. Their sacrifice was something she could never repay.
Keep your head in the game, Magnolia.
Another tremor shook the ship, and the unmistakable boom of thunder reverberated through the Hive. Magnolia lifted the edge of her fourth card, her breath catching when she saw it was a heart. Not the six or ten she was looking for, but she was still just one away from a flush. A ten would give her a straight. Either would be a difficult hand to beat.
“You’re first,” Ty said to Weaver.
Weaver got out his old-world coin and flipped it while holding Magnolia’s gaze. It was a trick, a ploy to make her think he was gambling. He brought the coin on missions with him, too, and used it when forced to make a decision with only lousy options.
He caught it in his palm, looked down, and said, “Twenty credits.”
Now she had a decision to make.
She could raise his bet and hope she was wrong about him having a good hand. He might fold. Or, if she was right and he did have a made hand—say, two pair or trips—he would call and she would still have a good chance of beating him with the last two cards.
Ty looked up at the lightbulb hanging from a cord over the table. It winked on and off as it swayed.
“Your move, princess,” Weaver said.
Magnolia didn’t twitch as her sweep of blue hair fell over her right eye. She kept her gaze on the commander. She was really starting to hate it when he called her that.
“Call your twenty, raise you sixty more.”
Rodger clapped his hands together. “This is getting good. I need more shine!” He took a long swig from his mug. After dragging a sleeve across his lips, he sat up straighter, opened his mouth, and let out a long belch that filled the room.
Andrew chuckled, Ty covered his nose, and Magnolia’s eyes widened as the belch, reeking of cheap liquor and fried potatoes, continued with no sign of abating.
There was no reaction in Weaver’s features. He looked at his stack of chips, then back at Magnolia. Without taking his eyes off her, he grabbed three columns of twenty chips and pushed them into the pot.
Shit, he’s on a draw, too, Magnolia thought. Her eyes moved to Ty as he dealt their fifth and final card. Then he put a single card facedown in the center of the table. It was the community card, the one that Weaver and Magnolia would share to make or break their hands.
This time, she looked at her card first, allowing Weaver to study her.
Two of clubs. Damn.
She could feel the heat rising in her cheeks. If Weaver’s tell was his squint, hers was a flushed face. She should have put on more fake rouge to hide her real blush. If she lost this hand, she wasn’t going to be able to afford any more black-market makeup for a very long time.
Weaver glanced down at his card, then looked to Ty, who flipped the final card.
She saw the ten first, then the heart.
There was no way she could lose this hand. She would be drinking shine and eating chicken tonight! Her mouth watered at the thought.
Weaver reached out and plucked the stick from Ty’s mouth and tossed it on the ground.
“You have no idea how annoying that is!” Weaver said.
Magnolia almost smiled. The commander was losing his cool.
“How much you got left over there?” Weaver asked.
She bit the inside of her lip and frowned, trying to play the part of a loser. “A hundred credits.”
She felt Rodger’s gaze across the table, and she automatically raised her hand to give him the bird. But when she saw the puppy-dog look on his face, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. The guy was practically drooling. It was actually endearing, in a way.
“Has anyone ever told you that you look like Catwoman?” he asked.
“Who the hell’s that?” Andrew said. He hit Rodger’s arm out from under him, making his head fall toward the table.
“Hey!” Rodger protested, wiping his mouth off. “She’s this total badass character from a comic I found in the archives.” When Andrew’s blank look continued, Rodger explained, “A comic book. You know, like Superman?”
“If you’re looking for a super man, he’s right over here,” Andrew said, laughing.
“More like super drunk,” Rodger grumbled.
Weaver snapped his fingers to shut them up and looked back to Magnolia. “I’ll bet a hundred.”
As he wedged the chips from his massive stack, Rodger wasn’t the only one drooling. Magnolia almost salivated at the thought of all those credits. She was preparing to push in the rest of her chips when the Hive jolted violently to starboard.
Andrew grabbed the table, but too late. It slid across the floor, and with it went the chips, cards, and four mugs with varying levels of shine.
“NO!” Magnolia shouted, watching in horror as her cards joined the mess on the floor. The first straight flush in her life, and she couldn’t even prove it now!
“What was that?” Ty asked.
Weaver scrambled over to the wall comm and punched the link. “This is Commander Weaver. What the hell is going on?”
Static crackled from the speakers. The ship lurched again, and a sound like a rifle shot rang out as lightning hit the hull. Magnolia joined Weaver at the comm.
“We’re headed right for a massive storm, Commander Weaver,” replied a voice from the wall-mounted speakers. “Report to the launch bay, ASAP.”
The lightbulb swayed toward Weaver as he squinted in Magnolia’s direction. She knew what the commander’s tell meant. The pile of cards on the floor wasn’t the worst thing that could happen today. If something had happened to the ship and they needed parts, there was a good chance she was about to end her hiatus from diving, in the worst possible conditions—right through the middle of an electrical storm.
“Where the hell did this storm come from?” Jordan shouted, though he already knew the answer. The weather sensors were 260 years old, like every other piece of equipment on the ship. Samson had run out of ways to repair them, which meant Jordan had a fraction of the time he needed to steer away from storms.
Jordan leaned into the spokes of the oak wheel to turn the bow away from the mountain of bulging clouds. A delta of lightning cut through the mass, branching out like veins from a throbbing heart.
“Ryan! Hunt!” he said. “How far out are we? I need a sitrep.”
Ensign Ryan, moving slowly because of a worsening spine condition, got up from his station and pushed his glasses higher on his freckled nose. “Checking the data now, sir, but this one seems very…”