Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 04_ Agents of Chaos 01_ Hero's Trial - James Luceno [84]
The game was being conducted in the Queen’s sole extant gaming parlor, where a couple of uvide and jubilee wheels spun noisily in the background and a half-dozen Twi’lek women with tattooed head-tails moved about with trays of free drinks, transdermal drugs, and a host of smokable substances.
Curiously, Droma had ridiculed Han’s decision to buy into the game—at the cost of almost all his credits—even when Han had justified it as a means of delaying the inevitable return to his filthy cabin, where Han had reluctantly passed the previous night and most of the day, and even the current win failed to disabuse the Ryn of disdain.
“An enterprise entirely lacking in depth,” Droma commented as Han, with arrogant delight, made even neater stacks of his winnings. “And humans, owing perhaps to their evolutionary good fortune, seem more inclined to be taken in than any other species.”
Han’s retort was a smug snort, but he couldn’t help recalling a similar sentiment he’d heard expressed more than twenty years earlier.
“Of all the races who gamble their well-being on uncertain returns—and there aren’t many, statistically—the trait’s most noticeable in humans, one of the most successful life-forms.”
The speaker had been a Ruurian academic named Skynx, who had accompanied Han on the search for Xim the Despot’s treasure.
“Laugh all you want,” Han told Droma, “but I’ve been playing since I was fourteen, and sabacc once won me a ship, not to mention a planet.”
“It’s a fool’s enterprise, nonetheless,” Droma said.
Han smiled cavalierly. “I’ll take a handful of luck to a cargo hold of wisdom any day.”
The Bith loaded a new deck into the shoe and showed the palms of his hands—ritual assurance that he had nothing up his sleeves, as well as the signal for the start of a new round.
Traditional sabacc games pitted player against player in a contest to come closest to negative or positive twenty-three, without bombing out by breaking twenty-three or holding cards equal to zero. And while the Queen’s casino employed the standard four-suit, seventy-six-chip-card deck, randomizer, and interference field, the house not only demanded a buy-in price but withheld 20 percent of all pots—the entire pot if all players folded—half of which went into a special bank for rounds played against the house.
The Queen also had special rules governing pure sabacc hands. A positive twenty-three beat out negative twenty-three, but a two-card twenty-three beat out a three-card twenty-three, and no player was permitted to request more than three cards in addition to the two received on the deal.
The next round found Han with an initial value of fourteen, a twenty after one randomizer hit, but a thirteen after an unexpected second randomizer hit. Even so, he drew the five of coins and, through skillful bluffing, managed to keep three of his opponents betting until the call, when he raked in another pot.
The following round went much the same, though he wound up edging out the Sullustan by a mere point and winning with a fifteen. With his original buy-in stake, plus his winnings, Han had close to eight thousand credits stacked on the table.
“When they fold every time you bet a good hand, you play to their eyes,” he bragged to Droma, just loudly enough to be heard.
He was about to ante up for another round when Droma called, “Bank!”
While Han’s jaw was dropping, the pit boss hurried over to confer with the cashier, who shortly announced that Han needed 7800 credits to play the hand against the house.
Murder in his eyes, Han whirled on Droma. “Is that fright wig of yours growing down into your brain? If I lose, I’m cleaned out!”
Droma merely shrugged.