Borderline

by Appleton, Robert

  Was the bitch even touching herself at her own sick fantasy? She sure as shit was. Those were real gasps of pleasure as she snatched a sidearm off one of her guards and aimed it slowly, expectantly, savouring every inch and every impulse of twisted foreplay leading up to her kill.

  Finnegan—

  Before she knew what had happened Lindsay had her boss by the throat and was squeezing. Hard. Horrid pressured gurgling noises emerged from under her hold. An instant death sentence cursed in wordless spit and bile. No turning back now. This was the course Lindsay had secretly wanted, the course she’d been driven to, the only course. Yelled threats from all around brushed off her like dust in a breeze. She pried the gun from Lori’s hand. Yanked the bitch away from her posse.

  “Drop your weapons or I blow a hole right through her face.”

  No messing. Lori’s heritage worked against her now; the guards all knew their days were numbered if they let anything happen to Papa’s little girl. They tossed their guns aside and backed away.

  “Finnegan, get rid of those weapons.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. Throw them in the shuttle.” He did, cool as you like. “Thank you. Now—you’re free to go.”

  “I am?”

  “And I’m—I’m sorry I lied to you. This is my mess now. You held up your end of the bargain, and I’ll never forget it.” A memory from long ago reared up out of the blue—a pipe organ in an empty church, and the organist’s chair, again empty, but somehow possessed by the lives and bonds and music of a multitude, people she’d belonged to once, in a world she’d almost forgotten. A promise that had not been fulfilled, that had been shattered when the colony had voted not to co-op the mining franchise for itself, and had scattered across the galaxy. A promise that she’d spent a lifetime trying to reassemble from the wreckage of desperate relationships, grubby jobs, and, in all honesty, a dedication to the science of not-knowing-what-the-fuck-to-do-with-life-ology.

  Perhaps it was karma that she’d finally met and shared an adventure with someone worthy of that organ chair, her organ, and that that person now had every right to kill her for it. After double-crossing him like that, she’d be lucky if he didn’t. The idea struck a primitive, aching chord deep inside. It played across decades—decades past, decades to come—with palling certainty. Just being on the bike with Finnegan, with no definite end, forgetting everything and everyone else, had somehow made more sense than a thousand certain journeys in the company of people who meant nothing.

  Man, crossing the border: it was what they’d both had to do, what they were lucky to have done, and what neither of them had really wanted to do. Given the choice again, would she have done it differently?

  Watching him push Bess out past the shuttle, seeing him climb on his beloved hoverbike, pointed no place, was the best and the worst moment of her life.

  She’d fulfilled her promise, at least.

  “And now it’s your turn, Lori.”

  “Twelve million. Cash. In the courier safe. It’s yours if you do the smart thing.” Not exactly a panicky outburst, but the arrogance was gone. That was worth a satisfying pistol-whip right there.

  Lori bleated, then reiterated, “Take everything in the safe.”

  “Well, seeing as I’m taking the shuttle...”

  “Hey, lady, did I just hear the word ‘safe’?” Finnegan, straddling Bess, called over his shoulder. Lindsay’s heart leapt to hear his voice one last time.

  “You heard right, mister.”

  “You should know those things really aren’t safe right now. I might have something more your speed.”

  “Eh?” What did he mean?

  “Today only, secretaries ride for free.” To her astonishment, he patted the empty seat beind him, revved a growl from the motor. “I ain’t got all day, lady.”

  If only she had wings...

  Without limp, she started away from Lori and her posse. Turned, aimed low at her snivelling former boss. “Four bullets, remember?”

  “Wait! I was only—”

  Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! And three more, one bullet per kneecap per person, left them all writhing on the sand. After spitting the last of her hate, Lindsay ran up to the hoverbike and jumped on behind Finnegan, never more excited in her life.

  “What happens when they shuttle out of here and come after us?” She suddenly realised how dangerous it was to leave Lori alive at all. Considered going back to finish the job.

  “Not a chance.”

  “Why not?”

  “Let’s just say I took a very indulgent leak just now.”

  “You—you crippled it?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” As he accelerated Bess, a sweet little song Lindsay hadn’t heard before blared out of the speakers, with the words, Getting to know you, getting to know all about you... The desert beneath them quickly blurred as she peered down, wondering where it would take them. To some faraway settlement on a distant border? Offworld? Farther than man had ever reached in space?

  “Finnegan?”

  “Mm?”

  “When did you know?”

  “Know what?”

  “That I wasn’t Lori Malesseur. You crippled the shuttle before she revealed the double-cross. How long have you known?”

  “All along, sweetheart. I knew right from the first time I saw your wounds—but it didn’t click till much later.”

  “What didn’t click?”

  “That they were bullet holes.”

  “So?”

  “Iolchians don’t use bullets. Lasers, pulse weapons, grenades, bad breath: they use everything but bullets. Trust me, I know. I figured the rest from there.”

  “So why the hell did you bring me back, knowing I was lying?”

  He shrugged. “Because by the time I knew for certain you weren’t Lori, it was too late to head east. And also...because you asked nicely.”

  “But I was a bitch.”

  “Was?”

  She grinned, patted his back. High overhead, the condor, with its formidable wingspan silhouetted against the green sunlit sky, kept pace with Bess, swooping every now and then to say hello. A small V-shaped avian entourage followed not too far behind, heading—just heading.

  It was a liberating thing, being on the move. And hell, if the Fleece could give them life and regeneration whenever it was applied, they could just keep going forever.

  And there was a whole lot of off-road in forever.

  ***

  About the Author

  Robert Appleton is an award-winning author of science fiction, steampunk, and historical fiction. Based in Lancashire, England, he has written over two dozen novels and novellas for various publishers, most recently Carina Press and Samhain Publishing. In his spare time he hikes, kayaks, and reads as many classic Victorian adventure novels as he can get his hands on.

  Website: https://robertappleton.co.uk

  Twitter: https://twitter.com/robertappleton

  ***

  Bonus excerpt—Read the first two chapters of Sparks in Cosmic Dust, an exciting novel by Robert Appleton, set in the same science fiction universe as Borderline:

  Chapter One

  Queen of Hearts

  Whoa, not so fast…

  Varinia scrambled to catch her bra before it slipped. The violet sand under her stool shivered as yet another exodus shuttle blasted off the asteroid. The umpteenth that week. She’d wanted to keep the striptease sensual, inviting, but her bra straps were already off-shoulder and the vibration threatened to give her lecherous customer a free eyeful of her breasts.

  Not on her life.

  He would have to pay for that privilege. More than that, he would have to achieve something no man had ever done on Kappa Max—he would have to beat her at her specialty card game, Cydonia Face.

  She glanced up through the transparent convex roof. The shuttle’s ringlet of blue flame faded as a shrinking iris into the awesome dilation of deepest space. These days the asteroid spun so fast on all three axes, owing
to the gravitational tug from the nearby gas giant having shifted its orbit, that the constellations appeared every bit as rootless and aimless as Varinia felt every hour of every day. How long had she been here now? In Earth time? Something like a year plus change. Tempting sleaze-heavers and lonely-hearts haulers with glimpses of her sublime curves for over a year. Unbeaten. Unspoiled. The most sought-after prize on Kappa Max. At least that’s what the advertisements claimed.

  But in that time she’d made a fortune.

  Cydonia Face, the game she couldn’t lose, the game she couldn’t escape from.

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to twist.” She pouted at her tin-man opponent through the reinforced glass separating them, then tapped the flesh-colored button on the left of her console, summoning another card. He licked his lips and clinked his tongue ring on the metal half of his mouth. The man’s cybernetic reconstruction wasn’t the worst she’d seen, but it gave him a creepy, unfinished appearance. The organic two-thirds of his face looked around forty-five and Creole—high cheekbones, quite handsome—and boasted a black-gray beard amusingly curtailed by the shiny titanium.

  “I’ll keep what I’ve got,” he replied, ogling her cleavage. His imitation right eye flicked up to covet the silver key hanging by a red ribbon on her side of the glass. When he’d won the last item of clothing from her, the window would open, the key would be his, and he could unlock the door and have his way with her anywhere, any way he wanted. The company’s only stipulation was that their girls suffer no physical injury; that would affect their marketability. Oh, the chivalry. Other than that, in the Delfin, the customer was always right.

  And always fleeced.

  Varinia spied her new card and heaved a sigh of relief. A red jack. That, together with her red king, gave her one half of a Cydonia Face—all four red male face cards. The odds against her opponent having the other red jack and king were pretty high with so few cards in play, but he’d stuck with a fresh hand of five—either he was bluffing or he had face cards galore. Given his gutless playing thus far, Varinia reckoned he was about to rout her with a royal flush.

  All right, Tin Man, let’s see if you really do need that heart.

  She relaxed her shoulders and cupped her cards upright against the edge of the console, as though she were scrutinizing them. A huge, almost-to-bursting inhale lifted her bosom, distracted him. Her resulting lightheadedness rose and slivered loose like a small bubble escaping from a bigger one, fueling a sublimation to her secret self no one on Kappa Max was aware of.

  They could never find out. Her reputation and her contract and her life depended on it.

  The silent drift was by now so practiced an art, she barely even thought about it anymore. Seven or eight feet through the glass followed by a one-eighty, as conditioned a maneuver as any automated shuttlecraft in space, to spy on her opponent’s cards. To cheat. A few moments of astral travel, out of body, unseen. All in the name of money…and celibacy.

  Coining.

  The farther she drifted, the less she felt her anchor. It had become dangerous in the early days, in her teens, when she’d daydreamed during class and ventured hundreds of miles from the real Varinia Wilcox. Breathtaking excursions, but she’d always felt, over those distances, that if someone hadn’t been there to physically shake her back to reality, she might never find her body again. Permanently alone in nether-flight, until her empty shell of a body shut down from lack of sustenance, or her apoplectic brain couldn’t wait any longer and would cast her adrift once and for all, leaving her…where? What exactly? Forever?

  Tin Man kept his cards face down but that had never stopped her. For a coiner, walls were so…yesterday. She drifted over his shoulder, skimmed the slick polymer jersey taut over his cybernetic upper arm, the goose bumps on his bare, tattooed forearm, and the cheap ring inscribed with Vermillion, Always on his wedding finger. She dipped into the cards just enough to discern the shadowy scrawls of shapes and numbers.

  Queen of diamonds, two black queens, an ace and a four. Not a bad hand. But a loser, nonetheless.

  Varinia focused on falling off her stool—a practiced method of returning her consciousness back to her body, quickly, through fear and shock—and shuddered when she came to. Tin Man tapped his fingernails on the console, impatient, oblivious to her spying. Indeed, when she was out of body, time and space held little dominion, and what seemed to take minutes, even hours, often passed by in seconds.

  “Here we go.” She tossed her long brunette curls over her shoulder. “Show me yours, and I’ll show you something no one else has seen…” she glanced at her breasts, “…if you win.”

  The poor man’s jaw squeaked partially open. Saliva pooled between his lips. Hand shaking in anticipation, he curled his fingertips and flipped the cards, immediately casting his stare to Varinia, the object of his costly fantasy. He leaned forward out of his seat, as if beckoning her cards onto their backs so he could nail them where they lay.

  Expressionless, she fanned her cards down and put him out of his misery.

  Tin Man glared at her then down at his denuded credit stack. A wounded, defeated face tightened into one of bitter fury. He snatched up his plastic stack and slammed a very human fist against the console.

  Varinia flinched, straightened her bra, then said, “Better luck next time, sweetie?”

  He blinked his good eye and took in her curves one last time before limping away across the violet sand. Despite feeling a little sorry for him—if those were all the credits he had left, he probably couldn’t even afford a cheap hooker tonight—the idea of a tin man, or any sleaze-heaver, man or woman, having their way with her after gambling for the privilege, was unconscionable.

  “Not a bad show, V.W.” Her boss gave an audible yawn over the intercom after Tin Man had left. “You creamed him for five hundred and fifty. Still unbeaten. We should name a star after you or something.” A typical bored bullshit line from an admittedly shallow if affable shack-sheik. Archie Delaney co-owned the entire Delfin strip maze as well as the two-bit hotel Varinia lived at, El Oso Negro. Married seven times in all, and all wives currently living with him under the same roof, he was one of the last influential businessmen on Kappa Max, and one of the last great shack-sheiks still in business this far past the official colony outposts.

  “Hon, I am the star,” she shot back while zipping up her helter-skelter blouse, its white rings each turning transparent, in random order, for a single revolution.

  “Call it a night if you like. We’re booked full tomorrow morning, and we’ve got you down as Rapunzel this time. Blond wig, princess get-up, the works. Sound good?”

  “Sure. Only give me a Prince Charming with the armor on the outside next time.”

  “Oh right, yeah. Ha-ha. No kidding. If he’d beat you we’d have to oil the fucker first. Catch some zees, ’kay?”

  “’Kay, Arch. I’ll let my hair down for you tomorrow.”

  “Have a good one. Dream of me.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Varinia rolled her eyes, playfully kicked sand out across the large oblong enclosure. For the first time in weeks, it struck her how ludicrous her still being here, still doing this for a living really was. The champagne pizzazz of her Selene modeling days bubbled up through the cool apathy she’d come to rely on. From being coveted by the entire galaxy on the greatest interstellar broadcast network ever conceived, surrounded daily by the richest clientele anywhere, to this—jizzed at under the table by the skuzziest dregs at the ass-end of space, one at a time, face to face. If her mum and dad could see her now…oh, brother.

  That one flaw, that one little shove from the only career path she’d ever wanted…

  No, fate didn’t take kindly to freaks. No matter how attractive and congenial and sexually desirable, if one had an incongruous edge, one had no place in streamlined paradise. For that was all Earth and the colonies existed as now for her—a wonderful dream, from which she was exiled forever.

  Backstage at the swimwear con
test, twenty-first in line, she’d relaxed herself by enjoying a quick out-of-body sojourn to the resort’s privet gardens under the lunar dome of Pont de Rêves. A sip for the soul. Alone. Silent. But she’d happened upon a woman’s body—white as virgin snow, collapsed on the lawn, not breathing. “Help.” Varinia’s snap back to reality and the sight of a dozen alarmed beauty queens had left her with the dilemma of her life. Apologize to them, blame her outburst on nerves, continue on her road to potential fame and fortune—or tell someone what she knew but couldn’t possibly know unless…she was “one of those,” nature gone wrong, a sly and manipulative freak who only achieved anything through her out-of-body ability.

  She made the choice she’d been brought up to make.

  It cost her everything.

  Though the woman whose life she’d saved had thanked her and then some, the Selene committee voted to remove Varinia from the contest, for “an unfair competitive edge.” Her story was to be given a sympathetic dramatization on one of the minor networks, but Selene used its considerable heft and saw to it that the program never aired. Friends stopped holo-phoning, sponsorship offers evaporated, and even the most mundane employers blanched at the red flag on her resume—Diagnosed EPT. Extra-Physical Traveler. The three letters that posted her farthest from everything she’d ever wanted.

  Assholes.

  Varinia eased the steel door open, glanced behind her to the empty purple sandlot-cum-bordello. She strode out and slammed the door behind her. The force flung dust and sand into an air-conditioned stream, which in turn lifted the violet wisp onto its shoulders and slung it into several ventilation ducts. She scoffed. Her bitterness was now viral, a part of the lungs of the complex. And it shared that feat with a thousand others’—polluted dreams, regrets, contaminants of the misbegotten, circulated in this artificial atmosphere and the atmospheres of a thousand likewise derelict worldlets. Spindrift into the shadows of space.