Dragonfly by Erica Hayes Read Free Book Online Page B

again?”
    “Santa Maria.” Nikita gave me a
read-the-damn-briefing
glare.
    “Yeah, them. He’ll have to generate Santa Maria’s crypto at the time they make the deposit. So either he’ll need to build a quantum emulator—”
    “Something that’ll look like Esperanza from the colonists’ end when they receive the cipher key? Sounds chancy.”
    “It is,” I said. “Too chancy for our careful friend. Quantum emulators almost never work. The other way would be to intercept the key inside the Esperanza neurocomputer, before it gets transmitted.”
    Nikita cocked a perfect blond eyebrow. “Can he do that?”
    “I’ve never seen it done. But assume he can. He’ll have to do it from within the Esperanza security system. That’s what he’s hacked the ice for.” I thought hard, my brow furrowing. “But unless he’s already studied the schematics for their neurospace, it’ll take hours to integrate his own interception algorithm. Days, maybe.”
    “He won’t want to sit there for hours. He’ll get caught.”
    “So, first steal the schematics for study. Right?” I pursed my lips. “Unless he’s already done that.”
    Nikita shook his head. “He got here six days ago, and since then he’s spent every evening playing tarocchi and every night on his ship, alone. If he’d broken the ice already, he’d have stolen the schematics and gone.”
    “So it could be tonight.” I glanced up at him, mischief burning bright, happy holes in my composure. “He’ll have to download the schematic data on-site. There’s no outside access. Think he could use some help?”
    “From a sexy crypto expert who just took him for half a million sols?” Nikita dropped his arm around my shoulder and kissed my forehead softly. “You bet he could.”

7
     
     
    At twenty-three hundred local, I crouched over the Esperanza neurospace console in warm green light, waiting for Dragonfly. A neurospace is a living computer, brain tissue embedded with circuitry, and bio-diodes glowed on the console’s soft living skin, casting colored shadows over my hands as I worked. Glowing white streams of maintenance data flowed in columns. The thick air, laced with neuroplasma, made my skin clammy, and water dripped from the low plastic ceiling. Sweat trickled down my neck and between my breasts, soaking into my tight black scoop-necked top. I’d chosen tight shorts too, with my shatterjay strapped on the outside, and black combat boots. Lazuli, brazen little thief-whore. I liked her already.
    I flipped through surveillance files, hunting for something juicy enough to be worth stealing. I wasn’t here to attack the vault; that was way too audacious for small-time scum like me. No, as far as Dragonfly was concerned, I worked for some faceless mob client who wanted the dirt on his enemies, and there was dirt enough here to bury half the sector. The amount of money flowing through the place meant that the Esperanza family needed to keep strict tabs on comings and goings. They had their own little intelligence service bubbling beneath their respectable surface, and from what I could see, they coerced, cheated and blackmailed with the best of us.
    I’d hooked my own virtual display into the loop—only a few photons thick so nothing would show on their monitors—and the stuff that flashed up was little short of macabre. These guys had the filth on everyone: three-star generals, top-flight civil servants, glitterati, the mob, even legit business tycoons and ordinary billionaires. Images, audio, bank account records, credit history, along with the usual juicy details about who was screwing what, for how much and to whose detriment.
    The security footage from last night was there. Even some snaps of me and Dragonfly at the tarocchi table. Not Nikita, though. He had some guy from casino security in his pocket; the same guy who’d be making our escape so interesting in a few minutes’ time.
    I peered closer, dragging through the pictures one by one.