Inside Straight

To his surprise, the table went quiet. He blinked. All eyes were on him.

“Well,” he said, “we can hole up here and hope that they all just go away, but when you get right down to it, we’re fucked, right? The island is a pain in the ass for the ground troops to get to, but if they take the west bank, they can starve us out or do some kind of pincer attack or nuke us from orbit. Whatever. And everyone we move to the island because it’s safer there means one less we have to defend the dams. We don’t have scorpion lady. We don’t have Horus. So, I’m sorry to say it, but I think we’re fucked.”

“God,” a voice said from behind him. “You are such a loser, Bugsy. No wonder we voted you out.”

Slowly, he turned.

Curveball, a duffel bag over one shoulder. Earth Witch beside her, frowning with her arms folded. The wheelchair-bound minister, Holy Roller, smiling and avuncular even now. Hardhat, grinning. King Cobalt, maybe grinning; under the mask, who could tell? Simoon and Bubbles looking more like runway models than warriors. Rustbelt standing in the back like an old-time locomotive with self-esteem problems.

“Uh,” Jonathan said.

Curveball stepped forward, her duffel bag sliding to the floor. She walked past Jonathan and Lohengrin, straight to Fortune. For a moment the pair were silent. Then Fortune—Fortune, not Sekhmet—nodded.

“So,” Curveball said, “what’s the plan?”

~ ~ ~

They talked all night. It was epic. I slept through a lot of the last part, and more than a little, because getting a little hope can make you realize just how tired you’ve been up until then.

The strategy was pretty basic, since none of us really knew what the hell we were doing. But we had a plan, and we had a bunch of aces and some guns and the determination that the killing was going to stop.

And it would. Either because we’d turn them back, or they’d run out of people to slaughter. One way or the other, it was coming down there.

We’d picked the place to make our stand.

~ ~ ~

The moon was beautiful, a crescent of silver floating in the black sky. The city lights of Syrene and Aswan were dark, each side keeping information from the enemy. Jonathan sat on the street, his hands on his knees, looking up at the stars.

“Hey,” Simoon’s voice said. “Bugsy.”

He looked over his shoulder. The woman stood in the doorway of the restaurant. The voices raised in debate behind her sounded oddly joyful for a council of war.

“How’s it going in there?” he asked.

Simoon stepped forward, letting the door close behind her. The voices didn’t vanish, but they grew distant.

“It’ll be a while before anyone decides anything,” she said. “But I think it’s going well. What about you?”

“I could sleep right here in the gutter,” Jonathan said. “Seriously. Just stretch out and snooze off.”

“Probably should. Rest, I mean. Not the gutter part.”

“Yeah. I’ll get to it,” he said.

“I wanted to say thanks.”

Jonathan looked up at her. She was prettier than he remembered. She’d been good-looking, but now in the moonlight, with her hair down, she was beautiful.

“Thanks?”

“For butting in,” she said. “For listening in on my phone calls. For getting John Fortune involved. All like that. I wouldn’t have had the balls.”

“I’m not sure I really did you any favors,” he said. Simoon shook her head, her gaze lifting to the buildings, the horizon, the sky.

“No,” she said. “I’m glad. I’ve never actually been here, you know. But I’m from here. So, you know, thanks.”

“Anytime,” Jonathan said.

~ ~ ~

There’s a real problem playing defense. We didn’t get to pick when the shit came down. That was all them. The Living Gods took their aces and a bunch of guns across to Sehel Island. Hardhat went too, the theory being that he could build a temporary bridge with his girders to evacuate if the army managed to land there.

Then we got ready.

~ ~ ~

“Harder!” Bubbles said.

Rustbelt raised his balled fist, and then lowered it. “Ah, cripes. This is just… I mean …”

Bubbles, now looking like a woman of a healthy hundred and seventy pounds, put a hand on Rustbelt’s arm and tried to keep her temper.