Chapter Forty-Six – Casino Ro-nya-l

Chapter Forty-Six – Casino Ro-nya-l

“Declaring war, at a time like this? When we have Antithesis and an economic crisis to deal with? That would be stupid!”

–Prime Minister Ilunga of Congo, four days before declaring war on Zambie Two, 2039

***

Mister Veaux gestured to the table. “Please, please be seated, I’ll have someone bring us fresh refreshments.” He walked over, only pausing when his loafers crunched on freshly broken crystal. He was the first to sit.

I walked around the table, pulled out a seat, then plopped down across from him. Almost immediately I leaned back a little, hunching into the too-tall seat. “Sorry about the cups,” I said. “I know it’s probably only a couple thousand credits of damage, but it also dirtied your floor.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he replied with a fixed smile. “We’ve had clients bump into serving drones and make more of a mess than that. The cleaning staff won’t have any difficulty with it.”

“Of course,” I said. My smile was a lot more genuine. He was probably just happy that he got here before the amount of damage I caused per minute got to the level where it would take more than a broom and a garbage can to fix. “So, you’re probably wondering why we’re here.”

“I will admit that yes, I’m very curious about that,” he said. “Our fine institution has had the visit of samurai before, but it has been some time since the last deigned to enjoy the Velvet Wheel.”

“Yeah, that’s fair. I can’t imagine too many samurai are into gambling or whatever. But uh, I’m here on business, of a sort.”

Veaux sat up at that. “Business? Are you going to pitch a game?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” I said. “Look, you held a conclave here a few years ago, right? A bunch of gangs all gathering up here for a quick chat?”

Veaux shifted. “I imagine denying it wouldn’t serve much of a purpose? Though I feel like my legal assistants would insist that I at least make it clear that the stance of the Velvet Wheel Casino is that no such event has ever occurred here.”

“Yeah, of course,” I said. “Look, I’ll lay it all out for you, and you tell me what you think, alright?” He nodded, and I went on. “The gangs of New Montreal are causing a bit of a stir, and usually that’d be fine, but I think that maybe the situation is very… explosive, and they’re flicking lit matches in a room filled with opened containers of fuel, you know? Eventually something’s gonna land in the wrong spot, and then…”

“Whoosh!” Nya said, with little hand gestures.

“That’s right. Now, my job as a samurai is to kill aliens and save people. That means saving people from themselves. Hunting down every gang that’s getting too uppity for its own good isn’t something I want to do. I’d rather have a polite chat with them, lay down the rules, just see how people feel about being, uh, civilised about all of this.”

“No explosions that way,” Nya said. She sounded a little disappointed about it.

I nodded. “No explosions. I imagine instability isn’t great for your business?”

Veaux made a so-so gesture. “It’s a bit of both? Highs and lows are the best times for us. But lows aren’t as good as highs. So, yes, we’d appreciate a well-protected and well cared for city as much as anyone else. Now, the event that you mentioned never occurred, but if it were to have, hypothetically, happened in our fine institution, then it would have required months of planning.”

“Months, huh?” I asked. “Have you considered doing it in a week?”

The man stared at me. I think the prospect scared him almost as much as my previous threat with the cups. “A week,” he repeated. “No. I could arrange to get into a call with the caterers in a week, a meeting with the security, and several meetings to reschedule other events, but all a week could give us is time to get through some of the very early pre-prep phases.”

“That sucks,” I said before leaning back. I wanted to stamp out all of this mess as soon as possible. Giving it a week to fester was bad enough, more than that and we might start hearing about trouble here and there across the city.

Unless the gangs knew about the meeting already. That might give them a reason to do what they could while they could get away with it still, but if we limited that…

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Okay, two weeks, then,” I said.

“That’s not much better.”

“It’s twice as better,” I argued. “And it should be more than enough. We just need a known neutral ground with good parking, decent security, and a large enough meeting room to seat a few dozen.”

“I think you’re underestimating how many would show up to such an event,” he said. “If an event had occur–“

“Dude, you don’t need to go into hypotheticals, I’m not gonna sue you,” I said. “If I was pissed at you, I’d express my anger with bullets, not lawsuits. So chill with the triple speak.”

Veaux blinked, then shrugged. “Fair enough, I suppose,” he said. “Last time we held a conference we had two thousand attendees.”