Sparks in Cosmic Dust (5 page)

It was horrific. But he’d seen worse, far worse on Ladon at those top-secret test sites. Those nightmare canyons. His nightmares…never to forget. He tucked his package safely under his arm and helped Lyssa up. Better still, the tool-pushers’ trolley lay on its side not far away. “Wait here,” he told her. After clearing the hooks and rack of all equipment, he righted the trolley and wheeled it back to her. “Solved.”

She gazed at him and then crawled aboard. Clay lifted the steering tether, pressed the button for the intelligent motor, and led the trolley over the thick layer of dust, back toward the lower tier’s inner sanctum.

A convoy of EMS buggies and roly-polys raced down main street, so he veered into a side alley and waited for them to pass. Lyssa didn’t say a word. He glanced up over the discolored roofs in time to see the last of the shuttle shrapnel hurtling out into space, F. Mulan’s bright radiance reflecting brilliantly off the metal fragments. But what could have caused such an explosion? A fuel leak? A rogue meteorite? Terrorists? Not that it made any difference. Hundreds of people were every bit as dead. The shuttle was every bit as gone.

And whatever happened now, he and Lyssa were every bit as fucked.

“Everything all right?” Varinia sat beside Solomon on the edge of the bed they’d made love on for the last four evenings. Stamina-wise, each session had been longer than the last, a definite plus, but he’d also grown less attentive, more impersonal in his lovemaking, as if he’d been increasingly distracted.

Grim-faced, monosyllabic, he hadn’t been himself throughout the card game tonight either. But at least they’d made it through according to plan. She’d insisted this last match be a close call, score-wise, to offset any suspicion Archie might have. Not that her boss had given her any indication he was displeased. In fact, neither he nor anyone on his staff had even mentioned her unexpected change in fortune. Maybe they were just downplaying it, hoping the public would remain none the wiser, thereby preserving her reputation, her appeal. In that case, she was home free. Just the little matter of settling her account with Arch. Tomorrow, she and Solomon could be booked on a shuttle to wherever they wanted.

She tried to part his untidy fringe with her fingers but it was solid with gel. Cheap stuff, it smelled of curdled cream. He’d slapped it on without a care for how he looked. Not like him, based on his previous appearances.

“Hey, handsome, I asked if everything was okay?”

He didn’t look up from the sand at his feet. “Just don’t feel like it tonight. Can we skip this one?”

A surprising response. For Varinia’s part, this was the perfect time for letting it all out—the nerves of the past few days, the euphoria of victory, hope for the journey ahead. She was horny and grateful and she wanted to fuck him. She could already taste the elation creaming from his cock, but…

It was not his elation.

“Sure we can,” she answered reluctantly. “You know what, we’ve both earned a rest. Lie back if you like. Talk if you want.”

He sank onto the bed, his boots still glued to the sand.

“So what’s on your mind, Solomon?” Playing agony aunt to a brooding miner was the last thing she needed right now but, by God, if that was what he wanted, he’d have her undivided attention. She’d never felt as obliged to anyone in her life. All those nightmares about losing to perverse sleaze-heavers, the worrisome
X
in the sex equation—it was safe to say she’d dreaded these past five matches long before Solomon’s arrival.

But what had she expected when she’d first signed Archie’s contract? To make a mint and then bow out whenever she chose, earn so much money for Arch that he’d grant her a reprieve from having to spread her legs? Had she
really
been that naive? That arrogant about her coining ability? Every girl here was a commodity, nothing more. If she hadn’t taken this step, Arch would have headlined her until she wrinkled or went insane…and even then…

No reprieves. No compassion. After all, it was a business.

“Where you headed for,” Solomon asked, “after we get off Kappa?”

She sensed the question weighed him down. But what was he worried about exactly? Where he’d wind up? Where
she
might end up, unprotected? Apart from the fun sex sessions and their intense planning afterward, they’d barely shared a personal word.

“Haven’t given it much thought,” she said. “You?”

“Same here. Crichton’s Folly, maybe. Good folk there, and who knows, with some capital I could start up my own mine, maybe even put up a few derricks in the tundra.”

“But that’s way past a hundred zee. You do realize ISPA is going to outlaw any commerce in a year’s time? The border’ll be as tight as a cork in a shrinker. Why don’t you put up sticks somewhere in the inner colonies? I hear those Hypatia moons are being allocated for deep-space migrants—some sort of incentive for ranchers and prospectors. Rich soil, I hear. And still something left in the mountains.” Solomon didn’t respond. She went on, “So you’re after carrying on working then, even with a quarter million clips? Whatever it—”

“That where you’re heading? Hypatia?”

“I doubt it.” Varinia eyed him carefully.

Blank-faced, rigid posture, staring away into the stars’ tubular roll overhead, he seemed preoccupied with her plans more than his own. What did he want from her? Was free sex and a quarter-mill bonus not enough? Where was he going with this?

“Okay, doll, I’ve got one for you. If you had no obstacle, what would be your dream destination, and who would you take with you?” she asked.

A long, tense pause, as though he was surveying the trust between them, testing for the right vein to strike. “Apterona.” His reply landed with a thudding lack of emotion. “And I’d take you.”

“You…what?”

“Uh-huh. Don’t you know?”

“Mmm, I guess.” But she didn’t know. Or at least she hadn’t. It suddenly flooded in and she felt ashamed for being such a self-obsessed bitch. Why hadn’t it dawned on her before? The poor guy. She’d treated him just as Archie had treated her—as a business partner, a means of getting what she wanted, using her sexuality. Meanwhile, the sweet guy had fallen for her under the strangest circumstances. But was it
that
surprising, considering who, what she was?

“I don’t want to lose you,” he confessed, still avoiding eye contact. “You can keep the money, just…is there any chance, you know…that we don’t go our separate ways? See what it’s like for a while? Just an idea.” He paused. “Think it over, maybe?”

How little she knew him. Reading an opponent at the card table was a far cry from reading a lover, especially when he’d given nothing away and she hadn’t bothered to look past her own bullshit affairs. And she owed him so much.

“Yes,” she answered on a guilty swell. “It’s crossed my mind as well. We’re a good match, aren’t we. I promise I’ll give it some serious thought.”

A long, prickly silence deflated the last of her success. Varinia found herself thinking seriously of life outdoors, of settling down on a ranch or on a big country estate where they’d make a living from the soil or the rocks of whatever world that might be.

“Time’s up,” he said.

“Huh?”

“For the session. I’ve a few errands to run, and we can talk about this tomorrow, or whenever.”

“Sure. Yeah, okay. Take care of yourself, Solomon. You remember where to meet?”

He got up and sprouted a big, fake schoolboy grin. “The greenhouse. At the gate to the apple orchard.” Patting his trouser pocket, he added, “I’ve got my lunchtime pass right here.”

“Good man. Be there or beware.”

Watching him leave sank her into a slow-churning funk. She had some huge choices to make. Up until now, it had all been appetite and recipe, and the ingredients hadn’t quite made the oven. Solomon’s declaration had shocked her. Reality—that scolding thing—never let her get away with anything.

Facing Archie Delaney suddenly wasn’t a prospect she knew how to handle. No law existed out here except for credits. Lucky, then, that an entrepreneur’s reputation lived or died on his business integrity. After all, who would accommodate a back-stabbing shack-sheik when there were others who played it straight? Then again, Arch was the only shack-sheik anywhere around. If he played dirty, who could call him out? Certainly not a vanquished clip-a-lay groveling for her dues.

But, damn it, she’d earned good money for him this past year. And she didn’t intend to take no for an answer.

The giant whirlpool tub slowed its cycle while Varinia watched through one of the porthole windows surrounding the bathhouse. Whirls of steam reached out from the cylinder, its smooth black interior now visible as the shield holding the pooled water retracted. The spin stopped altogether, and the last of the water trickled down the trough running through the center of the cylinder. Three naked forms climbed out of the empty trough. Two of the rears were spectacular—women’s, tanned and slender—while the third was a man’s and only so-so. Arch really ought to take better care of himself. His love handles would start to keep him afloat if he kept gorging the way he did.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” she shouted after him down the corridor.

After slapping one of the girls on her ass, he tied his bathrobe and called to Varinia, “Walk with me.”

Her mock salute didn’t amuse him. Instead, he slicked his long bronze hair into a sopping stream behind his back and tied it into a ponytail. The expensive clasp he used had a familiar red emblem, two crossed swords inside an octagon. It was his family motto, meant to represent their struggle for wealth after leaving Mars over a century ago. Arch was proud of his heritage.

“So you’re after squaring with the house?” he asked without looking round.

Varinia marched to his side. “Actually, it’s the house that needs to square with me. I figured after a year of—”

“Yeah, yeah. That’s all in hand. My accountant dialed up the ditty soon as you spread rug for that scrub—what was it, for the fifth time? Five nights in a row?”

His accusatory tone ought to have been sharper, but she sensed he was preoccupied. “How much have I got, Arch? You know I never kept tiptop figures. Except my own, of course.” Still no reaction, no old-fashioned banter, no dirty pithy remarks. “I’ll almost be sorry to see the back of this place.”

“Yeah?”

“No. Not really.”

He punched in the code to his private quarters and the door opened with a pulsing hum. “Okay, in you go.” He let her in first, then sealed them inside. After dropping his robe in the middle of the cramped study cluttered with boxes of paraphernalia, he paraded naked into the adjacent room where she couldn’t see him, snatching a towel from a wall hanger on his way in.

“Here’s the thing, V.W.,” he started.
Uh oh.
“You know how tight things are right now, what with the zee patrol putting the bite on us. The fact is, I’ve spent every clip I ever made on Kappa just replicating this place on the hundred-zee border. Between their taxes and the way they’ve cut the balls off every freight-haul outfit I ever did business with, I’m paying literally twenty times as much to get the materials I need to build another Delfin. No more shortcuts.

“My other interests have been easier to transplant because they’re part-funded by names already behind the border, but this place is my real clip-spinner, the one I don’t share with anyone. So it’s imperative my grand re-opening be with a supernova lineup of talent. The cream of Kappa and the other major colonies. None of these coupon clip-a-lays. No more. I need the best girls I can possibly afford outside Selene. Which includes you. No, I’ll rephrase—
includes
is bullshit, you’re the
exclusive
everyone in my profession dreams of having.”

She didn’t know what to say. Such sincere flattery from a boss whose flippancy was legendary among the Delfin’s staff. And he hadn’t gotten to his point yet—the sting in his tale. The part where he offered her a new contract.

Bullshit. She’d never go back to stripping, not for a billion clips.

“So I was wondering,” he continued, “what you’d think about headlining my new attraction. It’ll be classy—licensed, union-run, the works. None of this Cydonia face-to-face stuff. In six months you could be glad-handing the premier toffs from a hundred legit worlds, running your own cube sections, even picking the girls yourself. You’d never need to spread rug for anyone if you didn’t want. And here’s the best part—I’m cutting you in for a three-percent share. That’s potentially millions a year. Setting up might bleed us a little at first but just think of all those toffs we’ll be able to fleece down the road. New attractions, new prices. It’s criminal how legal it is, but legal it all is.

“What do you say?” Arch stepped out, dabbing his cheeks with aftershave. “Shall I have my man punch you up a new contract?” In his black shirt and phosphorescent collar, he looked suave, ready for business. “Put in any clauses you like,” he added. “As long as you’re there opening night and you help me get the place up and running—shall we say for three years?—you can invent your own job title, pick a union tier salary, anything you like.”

“Sounds great, Arch. What’s the catch?”

“You’ll get a three-percent stake…if you defer what I owe you now.”

“Come again?”

He smirked at her scowl, then waved her aside so he could get to a drawer in his old cedar desk. “I thought as much. Well, you’ll like this, at least.”

He retrieved a digi-coil wrapped in bubble paper, removed the device from its packaging and laid it on his desk. Varinia stepped closer. What the hell was this? No contract ever came in a digi-coil unless it was an assassin’s classified hit list or something on the level of an interstellar treaty. Kuiper Wells’s corporate spies had been known to smuggle digi-coils, but they were so expensive to encrypt, to make undetectable to all known scans, few had the clout to use them. So what was Arch, a border-hopping shack-sheik, doing with one, and more important, why was he showing it to
her?

“Arch?”

After opening the ID lock with his fingerprint, he held a pocket dark-light against the unbreakable electromagnetic scroll. He keyed a long password into the torch and waited for it to emit its sequence of dark-light pulses. In less than fifteen seconds she heard a
whir
and a
click,
and the digi-coil unfurled before her eyes, its sparkling copper sheen the most beautiful thing she’d seen on Kappa Max.

Arch stepped aside to fasten his cufflinks. “A little gift from Selene headquarters.” He flicked her a chill glance.

She scanned the first lines of the digital document and her heart plummeted.
Selene finalist. Disqualified.
Trying to look away, she froze at the letters
E.P.T.
emboldened next to her real name:
Sarah Jane Ryan.

She went faint, her coining self heaving outward against her skull. Trapped. Nowhere left to hide. She’d bluffed her way through a year of outright fraud. And Arch had known all along.

“One of your clients first brought it to my attention…oh, about eight months ago,” he explained. “The scrub recognized you from the pageant broadcast, even though you never made the stage. Asshole must have had a photographic memory. Said you were disqualified but didn’t know why. So I became curious, did a little digging—okay, some deep digging—and
voila,
you were too good to be true after all. We knew you were cheating at cards somehow, but as long as no one complained, I wasn’t about to intervene.