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

operations to keep him looking youthful, revealed bloody mush around his eyes. “You all right, honey?” he asked Lyssa while scanning her ticket and fake ID.
    “Sprained ankle. That’s why we’re late.”
    “See the doc after liftoff. He’ll sort you out.” The man scratched his bill-like neck. “Okay, you’re in cabin one-five-five. That’s in the tail section, starboard side. Just take the right-hand lift then follow the blue albatross sign. Enjoy your flight.”
    “Thanks. And thank you for waiting.” Clayton shook the man’s hand, and Lyssa gave him a peck on the cheek.
    “You’re welcome, folks. There but for the grace of God go I.”
    “Amen to—”
    A blinding red flash lit up the entirety of space, forcing Clay to shield his eyes. A moment later a hurtful blast full of stinging pellets threw him backward off his feet. The deafening roar arrived before he landed. A cloud of red-brown dust enveloped the hangar. After a split-second of violent suction came silence, then the clangs and thuds of collapsing metalwork and the fizz of rock dust settling all about.
    Lyssa crawled over and threw her arms around him, shivering. He made sure the contents of his package were undamaged, then he comforted her with reassuring words he didn’t believe.
    Despite the disaster, they’d been insanely lucky. The massive explosion outside could have depressurized the entire hangar. Instead, it must have merely ripped the outer shell off the building and triggered the automatic inner shutters.
    He struggled to his knees, scanning the debris for signs of the helpful orc. Nothing. Bits and pieces of the tool-pushers were festooned on a mangled steel lattice at the side of the old cafe. All along the white emergency shutters, amber lights danced from side to side and back again at a height of around thirty feet—no sound, just dancing lights—endless, aimless dancing. What the hell kind of warning alarm was that?
    “Clay, up there.” Lyssa coughed and pointed at the dome roof, to a jagged finger of warped metal that bounced, swayed on the hyper streams of emergency oxygen circulating above. Impaled on the end was the flight attendant’s dead body—the blast must have torn a strip from the hatch wall and hurled it through the poor man, whipping him aloft.
    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.

Chapter Five
Squaring With The House
    “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