"The Score of a Lifetime"

"Decoy."
By Eric Lewis.
Illustration by JACEY.
First appearance: Nature/Futures, 15 February 2018.
Short short short story (1 page).
Online at Nature.com (HERE; PDF).

     "This is it. It’s finally happening, after all these years. My big payoff. No more pennyante con jobs, no more rackets. No more bowing and scraping before thugs like the Regent . . ."

Impatience is bad enough; mix that with anger and greed and you've got a recipe for 
murder . . .

Characters:
~ Braygin:
  "Look, this is the score of a lifetime—I’ll take the risk. Unless you want to be the one to bring the Regent the bad news?"
~ Tesca:
  "Whatever we do, it’d better be fast—security system comes back online in 15 minutes, and we’ll need 5 of those to get back to the ship and blast off."

The bottom line:
  "He that can have patience can have what he will."
    ― The first American Postmaster General
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