Read Online Sparks in Cosmic Dust by Robert Appleton - Free Book Online
Authors: Robert Appleton
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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.
“When this arrived I danced a grotesque jig, buck naked, in the empty whirlpool tub. Never happier. Because you, my little Rapunzel, never had to let your hair down for anyone…not until you wanted to. Ker-ching. How right I was. You’ve been the biggest earner in the history of this place. That scrub you spread rug for…I’ll bet he wasn’t in on it, was he? Not until you invited him back for fuck number two. Damn, that must have been agony, trying to make it look professional for the cameras. V.W., I salute you.”
She gawped, speechless.
Time to get out…now. But what about her earnings? The bastard had her right where he wanted—in violation of her contract—and he had every right to kick her out on her ass, leave her penniless. Livid shame dredged her guts, snagged on the promise she’d made to Solomon. Tomorrow, the greenhouse, apples and saplings. Make that saps.
“You left me no choice.” If his delivery had altered in the slightest, if he’d let slip a hint of remorse or even gloating, she wouldn’t have reacted the way she did.
“Piss on your three percent. I’d rather die than decorate another one of your shit traps.” She grabbed and hurled the digi-foil, forgetting that it took a psammeticum drill to even scratch one. “So you know my secret? Guess what, I know a few of yours, you ass-picking sleaze-heaver. The day you go legit, that’s the day a tin man grows tin tits. Oh, and how’d you get that harem again? A seven-for-one special on lobotomies? Jesus, those broads are desperate. Best check them in at the luggage hatch or
“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.
“When this arrived I danced a grotesque jig, buck naked, in the empty whirlpool tub. Never happier. Because you, my little Rapunzel, never had to let your hair down for anyone…not until you wanted to. Ker-ching. How right I was. You’ve been the biggest earner in the history of this place. That scrub you spread rug for…I’ll bet he wasn’t in on it, was he? Not until you invited him back for fuck number two. Damn, that must have been agony, trying to make it look professional for the cameras. V.W., I salute you.”
She gawped, speechless.
Time to get out…now. But what about her earnings? The bastard had her right where he wanted—in violation of her contract—and he had every right to kick her out on her ass, leave her penniless. Livid shame dredged her guts, snagged on the promise she’d made to Solomon. Tomorrow, the greenhouse, apples and saplings. Make that saps.
“You left me no choice.” If his delivery had altered in the slightest, if he’d let slip a hint of remorse or even gloating, she wouldn’t have reacted the way she did.
“Piss on your three percent. I’d rather die than decorate another one of your shit traps.” She grabbed and hurled the digi-foil, forgetting that it took a psammeticum drill to even scratch one. “So you know my secret? Guess what, I know a few of yours, you ass-picking sleaze-heaver. The day you go legit, that’s the day a tin man grows tin tits. Oh, and how’d you get that harem again? A seven-for-one special on lobotomies? Jesus, those broads are desperate. Best check them in at the luggage hatch or
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