He loaded up his tray and turned to look for a seat at one of the tables. To his surprise, there were a couple of legionnaires beckoning to him from the nearest table. "Hey, new guy, come sit with us!" said one of them-a small human with a hairless head and a wide smile.
Encouraged, Thumper took one of the empty seats at the long table. "Thanks for the invitation," he said. "My Legion name's Thumper. What about you guys?"
"I am Mahatma," said the one who'd invited him. "And until you came, I was one of the new guys in Omega Company. So you have caused me and my friends to become veterans, for which we owe you many thanks." The others introduced themselves: a small human named Super-Gnat, and her partner, a Volton named Tusk anini; two Gambolts named Dukes and Rube; and two other humans named Roadkill and Street. As it turned out, several of them, including Mahatma, were also members of Sergeant Brandy's training squad, to which Thumper had been ordered to report after breakfast.
"Is this going to be anything like Legion basic?" Thumper asked.
Mahatma smiled. "I went through basic training with Brandy, so I have nothing else to compare it to," he said.
"Sergeant Brandy can sometimes be obstinate, but she is usually capable of adapting to circumstances."
Tusk-anini snorted, and said, "Mahatma has not seen many other sergeants. I have. All of them were tough, and Brandy is tough, too. But better than most sergeants, she understands that not all sophonts are just humans with funny faces. That is a good thing to know, for a sergeant"
"But she will make you work hard," said Rube. "I hear you are a fast runner and a good jumper."
"Well, 1 guess so," said Thumper. "They told me 1 set a camp record for the obstacle course in Basic."
"Ah, yes-the obstacle course," said Dukes, brushing crumbs out of his whiskers with one paw. "Captain Jester has us run the obstacle course, too. 1 believe that we do it differently from other Legion companies. It will be interesting to hear what you say after you run it with us."
"Uh-huh," said Thumper, suddenly cautious. "I guess we'll see what it's like when it comes up." He sensed some deeper meaning behind the Gambolt's comment, some unspoken subject he'd best not commit himself on until he saw its complexities firsthand. He took a forkful of salad to chew on, hoping that someone else would pick up the thread of the conversation.
But the only one who spoke was Mahatma, who simply smiled, and said, "Oh, yes, we will certainly see." And with that, Thumper had to remain contented until one of the squad looked up at the wall clock, and said, "Uh-oh-time to get moving. Don't want to make the new guy late on his first day here."
"Ahh, why not?" said Roadkill, grinning. "Make the rest of us look bad if he bein' always on time. Oughta start out on the wrong foot like the rest of us."
"Not correct," said Tusk-anini, shaking his huge head. "If new guy starts out on wrong foot, he doing it on his own. That what Omega Mob be all about-from each according to his inability, to each according to his misdeeds."
Super-Gnat looked up at her partner in awe. "Tusk, 1 don't know what you've been reading, but I somehow don't think it's a manual of military procedure. You're right about one thing, though-the new guy's gotta make his own mistakes. Go ahead, Thumper-the others can be as late or early as they want, but you need to be on time today. And good luck!" The others at the table laughed, but they all stood up along with Thumper.
"OK, new guy, follow us," said Street "Brandy be waitin'." And together they filed out of the mess hall toward the parade ground for Thumper's first full day with Omega Mob.
The observer in the Fat Chance casino's control center turned away from the monitor screen and called out to her superior. "Looks like Toni's got a live one," she said.
"Let's see," said the manager. She stepped up behind the observer's chair and leaned forward, looking at the monitor. "That guy again," she said. "Yeah, we've been watching this bozo for a good while now. Has all the marks of a grifter, but nobody's seen him doing anything we can nail him for-yet"
The observer leaned back. "Maybe he's running some kind of game outside the casino, then coming in to gamble with the take. I can't believe he came by that kind of money honestly-to throw a hundred bucks on the table like it didn't matter."
"As if," the manager-who was a stickler for grammar corrected her. "Well, we don't know where his original stake came from, but we can blame the old man for giving him enough to play at the big tables."
"The old man 1" the observer looked up in surprise. "What do you mean 1"
The manager grunted, then said, "This guy walked up to Victor Phule when he was pumping chips into the thousand-dollar slots. For whatever reason, Phule seems to have taken a shine to him. So he tossed him a chip and asked him to play it for him-to change his luck, I guess. The guy wouldn't take it at first, but Phule told him they'd split anything he won. Damned if the guy doesn't score an
eight-for-one, and come out four thousand ahead. This morning he changed a thousand into smaller chips-those thousand-buck chips are all marked-and that's what he's playing with now."
"Uh-huh," said the observer. "Well, it looks as if he's winning a little bit of his own. Red just came up twice more, and he was down on it both times."
"Shit," said the manager. "I hate it when these guys win. Let's just hope Toni can persuade him to let it ride a little longer-we don't want this guy getting too far ahead of the game. He's too slimy for my taste-and I'd just as soon not give him enough money to try something really big."
"Like what?" asked the observer. "I mean, he looks like a slimeball, but so far the worst I've seen him do is stare at Toni's boobs-which she's trying her best to get him to do, anyhow."
"Well, we've got a little bit of history on him," said the observer. "He and a woman were here a few months back, and we had a couple of flaky security incidents involving them-nothing we could make any kind of case on, but suspicious. And they left the station very suddenly, didn't check out or anything. Everything was paid up, so we didn't follow it up-but I'm wondering if we shouldn't have..."
"He won again," said the observer. "That's sixteen hundred he's ahead, now."
"Let him just keep playing," said the other woman, leaning forward to stare at the monitor. "Better yet, let him bump the bets even more. C'mon, Toni, that's what you're here for. Get him to put his whole wad on the red." She spoke as if the redheaded woman-whose job description fell somewhere between "shill" and "undercover security guard"--could actually hear her. Maybe she can hear, thought the observer. It wasn't unknown for the floor agents to wear equipment both to send and to receive messages.
Whether Toni had heard the supervisor or simply grasped what the situation demanded, the observer never found out.
But she leaned over to the object of their scrutiny and said something in his ear. He grinned, stupidly. Whoever this guy was, suave wasn't in his repertory at all. Then he reached in his pocket and pulled out a handful of chips. He looked at them, shrugged, and put them all out on the red section of the betting layout. Even from the observation cameras lodged in the ceiling lighting fixtures, it was obvious that there were three thousand-dollar chips in the stack.
"Yes!" hissed the supervisor. "He's betting everything he has. C'mon, black!"
"Black, yeah, c'mon black," echoed the observer. Rooting for or against one of the players wasn't really professional, but there were times even the most hardened casino hands got involved in the play. And nobody could really object if they were rooting for the bettor to lose.