Sparks in Cosmic Dust by Robert Appleton Read Free Book Online Page A

me…” She clutched the suede bag containing their swag and shuttle tickets tightly against her chest. “Or we’ll never make it.”
    Clay didn’t reply, nor did he have any intention of lifting her onto his shoulder. This heist had been Lyssa’s baby—the latest in a series of slapdash double-crosses against her various low-life contacts on Kappa Max. He’d watched her back all right, just like he’d promised. The minx had enough moxie for the both of them, no question, but her trigger finger had flipped half a dozen sneak thefts into outright carnage over the past week. Not that any of the corpses weren’t better off cold, but enough was enough. Soon as they made it to Magadan Three, if they made it, he’d have no choice but to dump her flat, leave her to her own skullduggery. She was simply too unpredictable.
    “Did you hear me, Clay? I said carry me. They don’t wait around out here.” She winced, collapsed in the gutter, her gray leggings now soaked through. The grit in her grimace disappeared, and she began to sob. “Some fucking partner you turned out to be. After all I’ve been through for you…” She slapped the oily water, then raised her face pleadingly.
    Crocodile tears. Pathetic. But also kind of lovable. Ever since she’d spared his life in the alley, Lyssa had kept to her word and then some—more than just a partner in crime, she’d cooked for him, bought him new clothes, intervened whenever anyone else had approached him and, perhaps most admirable of all, she’d never once asked about his past or the contents of the brown plastic bag he carried everywhere.
    “Oh, for Christ’s sake.” He bent to his knees and with a livid effort scooped her up onto his shoulder, fireman style. She was no dainty lass, but he was no weakling either.
    “Come on, come on.” She tried to wriggle him into action. “We’ve got like five minutes before they—”
    “Shut it and keep still, right now. ”
    He felt a pat on his backside. After a few lumbering steps he had his rhythm and, without roly-polys zooming by to make his progress seem glacial, Clay reckoned he could make good time.
    The shuttle Ionian, an ex-military vessel now relegated to ferrying economy passengers between deep-space colonies, resembled a colossal dirty-white penguin as its nose section bowed for the upper gangway to retract. The first consignment of passengers had to already be aboard.
    Clay lowered Lyssa from his shoulder but couldn’t catch her stumble and she fell flat on her ass. “Jesus Christ, lady…” he gasped for breath, “…is there anything you can do right?”
    She scoffed and climbed up his khakis. “Not before bedtime.”
    “Wait!” he yelled at the uniformed men feeding the last few cargo tags through their portable scanners a hundred yards away across the asphalt. “Hold that hatch, damn you.”
    Lyssa screamed. One of the men glanced up before finishing his checks, but he didn’t respond and there were no passengers left in the waiting area. None on the transparent tower gangway either.
    “Bug shit. We missed it.” Lyssa’s resignation dragged his hopes down to the gutter water spilling through a pothole outside the hangar’s derelict cafe to their left. Game, set and…
    “No, wait—they’re waving us in.” He forced her to over-stride as he dragged her toward the boarding hatch.
    “Thank God.”
    Clay waved his plastic bag at the flight crew, and now at the silver-suited tool-pushers racking their space helmets on a rickety trolley behind the cafe. He felt like leaping for joy. Procuring the funds for these tickets had been murder—all week, every day, crime after vicious crime. And now it was over. In a few weeks he’d be back behind 100z with over fifteen hundred clips to his name, enough to last him while he figured out his next move.
    “There’s always one,” joked an orc—oft-rejuvenated citizen—flight attendant. His too-tight facial skin, the result of multiple surgical