Bluffs

Maria

"Challenge," Delithita said, laying down the eight of Shade. Maria raised an eyebrow as she examined her own hand, calculating possibilities and hoping Delithita would not choose-- "Light."

Maria's lips thinned. Very often she won this game (having invented it in the first place was a good advantage), but every so often, Del trashed her quite efficiently.

She ran through her list of cards again. A ten of Shade and a two and a six of Life, all useless: black could not answer the challenge of the opponant's white. A two of Light and a two of Death, both opposite the Shade, but neither a match for the eight, nor both together. Her last card was the Rose, the Essence card for Life, unfortunately of the wrong suit. The Sun would do the trick, but naturally she didn't have it. The only choices were either to discard the three black cards and draw three new ones (thus potentially losing her entire black defense except the Rose), or simply allow Delithita to win this challenge and thus draw another card.

"Your Executioner needs refitting doesn't it?" she said dryly. The younger woman just grinned. Maria gazed at her hand, counted up the eight cards and decided giving her more ammunition would be extremely unwise. She already had Death's Essence card and could thus counter any challenge she made for that suit, and was well on her way to having a complete defense against Life as well.

She sighed, tossed her three black cards. "Emp," she said, and drew a card from the deck, chose the three of Light from the discard pile, and plucked a card from Del's hand.

The card from the hand turned out to be the Knife. She smiled as Del winced at the loss of her Death defense. Judging by the reaction, she assumed she had been relying entirely on the Essence card and had no other significant defense in that suit. So much the better. The card would not help Maria with the current challenge too much though.

The card from the deck was a three of Light. She closed her eyes, shook her head in defeat. The two, the three, and the two of Death together were not a match for the eight which sat on the table between them, laughing at her predicament. "Can't beat it," she said, flicking the eight into the discard pile. Del smiled and drew.

"Even the emp didn't help eh? You must be bad off in the whites."

"Mmm." Let her continue believing that; her white defense was actually quite good: the eight was a particularly unlucky card to run against at that time. "Challenge..." she said, running a finger thoughtfully down the edge of the cards. Del was pretty much empty of Death cards, she assumed, and the two of Life was probably her best choice. The two could only be defeated by a two of the challenged suit, or two ones of the same color with one of that suit... She flipped the card onto the table. Del did not react very much, and Maria knew she was just covering her disappointment. "Death," she said.

"Um... funny you should mention that," Icey entered the room in his combat suit. "We have some Cybrids picking around the perimeter we should pry off. Four Adjus I think."

Del dropped her cards and leapt to her feet. Maria was about to drop her and on the table, but paused. She carefully avoided looking at Del's upturned hand and set her own cards face-down. They'd resume the game when they returned.

-----

The cards were a mess, splattered all over the table. No one could tell what had originally belonged to whom. With a sigh Maria peeled off her soaked combat suit, wrapped a blanket around herself, and tried to rest.

Del and Icey were working on Icey's Gorgon which had taken a beating during the combat. The vibration of the loading crane through the dark basalt floor disturbed her as she rearranged herself on the pile of blankets on the stone floor, preventing sleep.

Instead, she sat up against the rough-hewn wall and sighed, resting her elbows on her knees and looking around the darkened room. A stray piece of metal protruded from the metallic portion of the wall, an error that resulted from the jagged cut made to it when it was salvaged from an Executioner's armor plating. The uranium made a dull booming noise as she rapped it with her fist.

The cards were still scattered. Perhaps it had been a small burst of wind from a pressure variance? That happened from time to time: the imperfect air seals occasionally wobbled and released gusts of air out the locks, which was why the Ghosts usually wore their spacesuits even indoors.

The time, she thought, glancing at the clock hanging from a screw driven into the wall two meters up. Zero three hundred. Not a fit hour to be awake at all, much less restless.

The battle was over and won, for now, so why couldn't she sleep? Were the old memories haunting her again? She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, then opened them again, her face returning to its normal icily controlled expression, recovering from the brief burst of tears. A tiny trail of salty moistness trickled down one cheek, and she felt it and knew she would not be able to control the coming flood.

She grabbed her black suit and threw it on over her clothes, and opened the creaky airlock door to the silent blaze of light outside. "Maria?" Del called through her suit communicator.

"Leave me," she said curtly, and switched the communicator off.

She walked for a couple hundred meters, falling into the bouncy gait the low gravity generally forced one into. A small ledge poked over the rim of a crater, shielded from the sun which burned even through the suit. She went over to the ledge, climbed down onto the crater rim, and rested against the rock shelf.

There, protected from the sun and the ears of her friends, she cried.

As her sobs trailed away and she drifted off to sleep in the shadows, she could not remember what it was she was crying for...

-----

Morning came, at least according to the soft chime of the zero-six alarm in her suit. Her eyes snapped open immediately, her dream interrupted but cruelly not forgotten.

The sun's corona formed a pearly halo highlighting the crater rim beside her. The steady shine of the stars, not twinkling here where there was no atmosphere, glittered among the streamers of the corona and the dimmer fuzziness of the Milky Way.

Maria rose to her feet, squinting as sunlight set her suit helmet ablaze with light. She turned away, glanced to the north over the silent plains.

Her eyebrow ascended slightly as she noticed Delithita's Shepard, returning from a haunt no doubt, and somewhat farther back, Icey's limping Minotaur. Streaks of carbonized paint blackened the dusky brown vehicle, and the stylized blue ice cube decorating the side of the cockpit was burned clean off.

One of the Shrike launchers was, though not destroyed, sure to require some repairs; it dangled loosely from its mount, pointing nearly straight downward.

Maria tapped her suit communicator, snapped, "You'd better have a good reason for going out there without telling me."

Del's voice came back a moment later, rather peevish. "Yeah. We didn't want to disturb your nap."

Icey cut in a second later. "You looked so peaceful and serene laying there in your crater," he said, and coughed a few times. Maria bit her lip to prevent an annoyed retort. Icey coughed a few more times. "Whatever you glue things with inside here, it sure stinks when it gets burned..."

Maria sighed. "Have a report before you get in," she said, and closed the channel, heading for the Herc bay's concealed entrance.

A few minutes later they were sitting around the makeshift table in the small room behind the Herc bay, Maria gazing through lowered lashes at the others, Del resting one elbow on the table and her chin in her hand, Icey laid back in his chair with his feet propped up on the table. He wiggled his foot around, kicked at the projecting metal plate Maria had not bothered to remove when she carved the table out of the upended foot of a Cybrid Goad.

"So, what happened?" Maria said, steepling her fingers in front of her and raising an eyebrow.

"Well, ma'am," Icey began. "We picked up a few contacts to the north, so we went to investigate--"

"Without awakening me."

"There were only three contacts, mediums. We eat mediums for breakfast you know." Maria inclined her head in acknowledgement. "So Del took the lead and made FC with a pair of Swineherds--"

"Clarification," Del said. "Shepards, modified to have six small mounts, two more on the top and bottom of the main section, with a somewhat larger shield generator than usual. Ugly damned things."

Maria arched an eyebrow. Del's own Shepard would not win any beauty contests itself. "Tactical capabilities?"

"Slower than a standard Shep, somewhat more durable, roughly similar firepower."

Maria filed that for future analysis. "Continue."

"Del engaged the Swineherds and ordered me to provide cover from seven hundred meters, which I did. The first Swineherd fell quickly to a twenty-second volley of EMPs from me, ELF and H-auto from Del, and two pair of Shrikes. The other Swineherd engaged Del also and cut her shields down. I developed a coolant leak as one of the Shrikes blew in the tube, and a bit after that a Recluse engaged me." Maria winced: with missiles, at close range, the Recluse was one of the most difficult vehicles to fight. "So I let the Recluse get me while I helped Del finish the other Swiney."

"Risky but viable," Maria noted.

"Yeah, I couldn't fight that damned thing. The railguns were ripping my shields down so there was no way I was going to crouch near it."

"Railguns?"

"Yeah, seems they aren't just using them on the Adjus anymore. The Recluse's tactics were pretty good; it got behind me while I tried to turn back to it. It blasted a big hole in my back, piercing the cockpit and nearly knocking me unconscious with the shock."

"I will assume Del took care of the Recluse for you."

"Yeah, she had to. I did get the two Goads that appeared over the horizon though."

Maria nodded, then paused. "Two Goads, two modified Shepards, and a Recluse? That is a very odd force."

"How so?"

"Consider. When the Cybrids send out a force, it has a purpose. They will calculate what the most efficient arrangement is, usually several different lights, a heavy or two with a screen, or a group of mediums. That you fought two mediums, a tank, and two lights-- what were the Goads and Shepards armed with?"

"Gamma-cannon and EMP/H-autos, respectively," Del said.

"A Shepard of that description would be optimal against mediums," Maria said, her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "While the Recluse and Goads are multipurpose configurations. They were expecting to encounter a number of enemies, thus they brought a force that would..." Her voice trailed away. "Was the Recluse particularly well-armored?"

"Yes, and the Goads had shield amplifiers. I had to fire extra power through my EMPs to get them down," Icey said.

"They intended to meet a force of greater numbers, and hold them... not defeat them; no, then they would have thrown an Adju or three in, rather they wanted to hold their enemy... until reinforcements arrived..."

An instant later the sensor alert shrilled through all their suit communicators. Throwing herself over the table directly at the door to Ops, Delithita reached the console before the others had even stood up. She muttered a word Maria had never heard before but wrung a brief smirk from Icey. "Inbound, northeast, over the cliff. Four kilometers, closing fast. No details, radar return about six points."

"Either half a dozen Adjus, three Execs, or ten Goads," Icey muttered, snapping his suit helmet on.

"Wait for it," Maria said. "Del, finetune that; we need to know what we're facing!"

"Trying, trying... reading... seven sources... eight. The biggest is about one point... six, confirmed, an Exec, a... two Recluses, and five Goads or Bolos, can't tell yet--"

Maria made a few quick calculations. "Del, take the Marble, Icey, la Lata."

"How's Lata fitted? Heavies?"

"No, an EMP, an ELF, and two light BCs. Caught me in the middle of a refit." Maria slammed her own suit helmet into place and joined Icey in the airlock to the Herc bay.

"What're you getting?" Del asked.

"La Fantasma."

"It's in pieces all over the place!"

The Herc bay with its masses of salvaged equipment-- or as some would call it, debris-- was dark and unpressurized at the moment. Maria picked her way through the junk to her tank, which as Del had pointed out was indeed a mess. The vehicle had not been used in about two months, and skeletal structural members poked out from beneath stripped armor. Probably the only things that still worked were the engines and the weapons; the cloak, sensors, jammer, and computer were mostly fried.

Fortunately, feet and fists were about all the valiant little tank would need on this trip.

Maria climbed in even as Del's fat Executioner-- which did indeed look like either a potato or a marble-- pushed the main door open.

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