“Surely you can’t have sold all of them between late yesterday and this morning,” she said, puzzled.
Now he did meet her gaze. “The entire lot has been optioned already.”
She was jolted by the information and did a doubletake. “By who?”
“The House of Tirion took most of them and Mikal scooped up the rest.”
“How can they possibly afford such a buy?” she wondered out loud.
“The payments cleared,” the manager told her. “And by the way, Accounting tells me we’re still waiting for your final payment on the last set of trainees we sold your House.”
A sick feeling in her gut because she hadn’t made the payment he was referring to and would have to extend her line of credit to do so, Samyra kept her game face on and nodded. “I’ll check on that this morning, I promise. When will the next shipment arrive?”
“There isn’t one scheduled,” he said and she knew he was lying from his demeanor and the tic in his left eyelid. “I’ll com you.” With that he ended the call.
Sitting in her chair staring at a blank holo platform, Samyra was struck with a wave of vertigo. Nothing like this had ever happened before and it was unsettling to say the least. Gritting her teeth she placed a com to the bank and tried to pull more funds from her line of credit, only to be told crisply she’d exceeded her limit already and the credit was cut off until the total was reduced.
That left only less reputable lenders with sky high interest rates and she shrank from doing business with them. Surely things weren’t that bad already. There was one final payment due from Kyden for the special engagement and Harton’s contract—she’d stall her creditors until that hit the bank. It was due in—she checked her calendar—five days.
Her com chimed with an incoming call and when she checked who it was from, she inhaled sharply. “Tirion, to what do I owe this unusual contact?”
“I’m doing fine, thanks, Samyra,” he said sarcastically as his holo materialized. “I hear things aren’t going so well for you at the moment, contractually and so forth.”
“Really?” she said airily, leaning back in her chair as if she hadn’t a care in the world. “I think I’m doing pretty damn fine, considering I just got home from working with Kyden the Death Dealer. First female gladiator he’s ever showcased, you know.”
“Perhaps you should have stayed there then,” Tirion said, unimpressed. “I didn’t place a com to spar with you —I know your House is struggling to find new fighters, well struggling in general and I have a deal you can’t refuse.”
“I’m listening.” She was sure any deal he had to propose would not be to her advantage.
“Sell me your new gladiator, Jamirr I think his name is. He’s worth quite a few credits and he’s got potential. I can use a man like him.”
“He’s not for sale at any price. And in fact I’ll be building a new lineup around him for the upcoming season.”
Now Tirion laughed. “With who? Mikal and I’ve got the market cornered on new prospects in case you hadn’t heard.”
“On Porter Three maybe,” she said with a casualness she wasn’t feeling. “Remember I just got home from the Five Systems and the gladiator pool there is deep and highly skilled. With Jamirr as the keystone, I’ll have a team the likes of which this arena has never seen. Don’t bother comming me again, Tirion. I’ve got better things to do.” She cut off the call as he opened his mouth. Of course he’d learn soon enough she didn’t have any fighters coming from the Five Systems but for now she’d dealt his insufferable arrogance a blow.
The quicksand she was standing in kept getting deeper and deeper. Samyra shook her head and tried to quell the roiling of her gut. Mind made up, she spent the rest of the day making calls to associates and contacts in the gladiator world of the Porter-Tevigni circuit. Most were tight lipped and unwilling to talk but finally she had an old friend and arena partner of her father’s on the line and he dropped a few bombshells.
“You didn’t hear it from me,” he said to her, rubbing his chin, “But Tirion has it in for you. He wants you and your House ground into dust.”
“But why? The gladiatorial world is big enough for both of us.”
“Not at the top. And you humiliated him in that last fight, made him beg the crowd to spare his life. He wants revenge.”
It made a perverted kind of sense but she saw holes in the narrative. “But he can’t be behind my credit getting cut off or the market manager refusing to sell me any new fighters. No one has that kind of power and funding.”
Lowering his voice and leaning toward the holo camera, her father’s old friend said, “He’s got backers, Samyra. New players here on Porter Three with an unlimited amount of credits and a hell of a lot of pull. They want in. They want to own the gladiatorial business and Tirion is their boy. He’s the handsome front man. You can’t compete with them. You need to walk very carefully is my advice.”
“Are you saying the Amarotu Com?—”
“No names,” he interrupted her harshly. “I can’t say any more. Good luck, be smart, and don’t com me again. You’re rapidly becoming poison. I’ve done my last favor out of gratitude to your father. And we’re quits.”
The com cut off.
As the room swirled around her, Samyra thought she’d pass out. The interstellar mob was making inroads here? And she’d become a target because she’d beaten Tirion so badly and might do so again. Her first impulse was to go find Jamirr and talk to him about the threat but he couldn’t do anything to help. In fact, she realized with a sinking feeling, there was no one she could turn to. The police? The cops would laugh her out of the building. So far everything that had happened to her could be dismissed as normal events. She was getting older, she hadn’t been fighting up to her old levels. She did have shaky credit. Tirion and Mikal had every right to scoop up all the fighters. She was under no illusion her father’s old buddy would repeat his remarks under oath. It was all hearsay anyway.
There was nowhere to escape the tightening net.
