The other man at the table—big, looking like a ruffian—said his name was Step Allenovich. He gestured at the cards on the table and asked, “You play poker?”

Cards? Talk about old-fashioned. But even some purists in the barracks insisted on using them.

“Been known to,” Creamer told him. At last! A little bit of luck. Here, finally, was his route to siddars and a night’s excellent entertainment. He’d been good enough at the game that some of his fellow officers still refused to play him for stakes.

Poor fucking circus freaks. Vengeance for all the ills inflicted on him. He’d skin the bumpkins for everything they had.

Lifting the whiskey, he took a big swig, and said, “Deal!”

Chapter 22

  22  

They called it “the bush.” A term Private Keeko Ituri had never heard before. This was just awe-inspiring. Beyond a doubt the most phenomenal patrol she’d ever participated in.

In her youth, Ituri had spent some time in the deep forest in Congo. Her ancestors had raised plantains there, done some mining, and she’d wanted to gain an understanding of what their lives might have been like. What they’d seen and smelled. Making that tie to the past had been important to Ituri. So she’d visited the re-wilded areas where the rainforest was being introduced with regenerated species.

Wasn’t nearly as freaking incredible as being on a quetzal hunt on Donovan. Granted, this wasn’t deep forest, but it was a whole lot more remarkable, strange, and wonder-filled. For a poor kid from the slums of Kinshasa, it was about as unbelievable as a dream could get. Ituri had enlisted in the Corps because it was a way out of the endless cycles of poverty. She’d scored high enough on the Corporate aptitude tests to get her to boot camp. She’d never worked harder—figured she’d die before she failed to make the cutoff for service—and had passed. Until Donovan, that first trip off-planet to Transluna had been the high point of her life.

Being picked for the Donovan mission had scared her and her fellow marines half out of their wits. Deep within was that knowledge that they could end up lost. Die out in the black, never to be found. But here she was. Alive, walking her patrol transect through an alien landscape, her armor shining under an unfamiliar sun. The colors and shapes of the plants and trees, the sound of the chime, all the funny bushes and creatures, they were all miraculous in Ituri’s opinion.