With an arch expression, Sparrow said, “Don’t take it so seriously, Doc. I’m just ribbing you. If—”
Vishal faced her. “Well please don’t, Ms. Sparrow. There is none of this ribbing with anyone else, so I would thank you to treat me with the same respect as I treat you. Yes. Thank you.” And with that, he went back to eating.
Sparrow seemed embarrassed and taken aback. Then Falconi gave her a warning look, and she cleared her throat and said, “Sheesh. If you feel so strongly about it, Doc, then—”
“I do,” said Vishal with definitive firmness.
“Uh, then sorry. Won’t happen again.”
Vishal nodded and continued eating.
Good for him, Kira thought dully. She noticed a small smile on Nielsen’s face, and after a few minutes, the first officer got up and went to sit next to Vishal and started talking with him in a low tone.
Soon after, Sparrow left to check on the Jelly.
Everyone had finished eating, and Nielsen and Vishal were washing up, when Falconi trudged over to Kira and carefully lowered himself onto the floor next to her.
She watched without much curiosity.
He didn’t meet her gaze but stared somewhere at the ceiling across the room and scratched the day-old stubble on his neck. “You going to tell me what’s bothering you, or do I have to pry it out of you?”
Kira didn’t feel like talking. The truth about the nightmares was still too raw and immediate, and—if she was honest with herself—it made her feel ashamed. Also, she was tired, tired right down her to bones. Having a difficult, emotional discussion felt like more than she could deal with at the moment.
So, she deflected. Motioning at the holos, she said, “That’s what’s bothering me. What do you think? Everything’s gone wrong.”
“Bullshit,” Falconi said in a friendly tone. He gave her a look from under his dark brows, the blue of his eyes deep and clear. “You’ve been off ever since we got back from that Jelly ship. What is it? Your arm?”
“Sure, my arm. That’s it.”
A crooked smile appeared on his face, but there wasn’t much humor to his expression. “Right. Okay. If that’s the way you’re going to be.” He undid a pocket on his jacket and slapped a deck of cards down onto the floor between them. “Ever play Scratch Seven?”
Kira eyed him, wary. “No.”
“I’ll teach you then. It’s pretty simple. Play a round with me. If I win, you answer my question. If you win, I’ll answer any question you want.”
“Sorry. I’m not in the mood.” She started to stand, and Falconi’s hand closed about her left wrist, stopping her.
Without thinking, Kira formed a cuff of spikes around her wrist, spikes sharp enough to cause discomfort though not sharp enough to draw blood.
Falconi winced but kept hold of her. “Neither am I,” he said, his voice low, his expression serious. “Come on, Kira. What are you afraid of?”
“Nothing.” She sounded unconvincing even to herself.
He raised his eyebrows. “Then stay. Play a round with me.… Please.”
Kira hesitated. As much as she didn’t want to talk, she also didn’t want to be alone. Not right then. Not with the leaden ache in her chest and the fighting going on in the system around them.
That by itself wasn’t enough to change her mind, but then she thought of the scars on Falconi’s arms. Perhaps she could get him to tell her the story of how he acquired them. The idea appealed to her. Besides, there was a part of her—buried deep inside—that really did want to tell someone about what she’d learned. Confession might not make things any better, but perhaps it would help lessen the pain in her heart.
If only Alan were there. More than anything, Kira wished she could talk with him. He would understand. He would comfort and commiserate and perhaps even help her find a way of solving the galactic-level problem she’d caused.
But Alan was dead and gone. All she had was Falconi. He would have to do.
“What if you ask something I really don’t want to answer?” Kira said, a bit of strength entering her voice.
“Then you fold.” But Falconi said it as if he were daring her otherwise.
A sense of rebelliousness stirred within Kira. “Fine.” She settled back down, and he let go of her wrist. “So teach me.”
Falconi examined the hand she’d poked and then rubbed it against his thigh. “It’s a points game. Nothing special.” He shuffled the cards and started to deaclass="underline" three cards for her, three for him, and four in the middle of the table. All of them facedown. The remainder of the deck he set aside. “The goal is to get as many sevens or times sevens as possible.”
“How? By multiplying the cards?”
“Adding. One plus six. Ten plus four. You get the idea. Jacks are eleven, queens twelve, kings thirteen. Aces low. No jokers, no wild cards. Since each player has seven cards, counting the shared ones,” Falconi indicated the four cards on the deck, “the highest natural hand is a straight sweep: four kings, two queens, and an ace. That gives you—”
“Seventy-seven.”
“For a score of eleven. Right. Cards always keep their face value, unless—” He held up a finger. “—unless you get all the sevens. Then sevens are worth double. In that case, the highest hand is a full sweep: four sevens, two kings, and a nine. Which gives you…” He waited for her to do the math.
“Ninety-one.”
“For a score of thirteen. Betting is normally done after each shared card is turned over, but we’ll make it easy and just bet once, after the first card. There’s a catch, though.”
“Oh?”
“You can’t use your overlays for the adding. Makes it too easy.” And a message popped up in the corner of Kira’s vision. She opened it to see a prompt from a privacy app that would lock their overlays for as long as they both chose to use it.
Annoyed, she hit Accept. Falconi did the same, and everything on Kira’s overlays froze. “Okay,” she said.
Falconi nodded and picked up his cards.
Kira looked at her own cards. A two, an eight, and a jack: twenty-one. How many sevens did that make? Despite the math she’d done during FTL, multiplying and dividing numbers in her head still wasn’t easy. Addition it was. Seven plus seven is fourteen. Plus another seven is twenty-one. She smiled, pleased that she already had a score of three.
Then Falconi reached out and turned over the first of the four communal cards: an ace. “I’ll start the betting,” he said. Behind him, the Entropists deposited their empty meal wrappers in the trash and headed out of the galley.
“You dealt. Shouldn’t I?”
“Captain’s prerogative.” When she didn’t argue, he said, “Same question as before: What’s bothering you?”
Kira already had her own question ready: “How did you get those scars on your arms?” A hard expression settled on Falconi’s face. He hadn’t expected that from her, she could tell. Well, good. It served him right. “Call. Unless you think that’s a raise?” She asked in the same tone of challenge he had used before.
Falconi’s lips flattened into a thin line. “No. I think that counts as a call.” He turned over the next card. A five.
They were both silent as they checked their math. Kira still came up with the same figure: twenty-one. Was that a good hand? She wasn’t sure. If not, her only chance of winning would be to ask another question, one that might make Falconi fold.