[04] Elite: Mostly Harmless (21 page)

Chapter 21

‘A Dolphin?’

‘Yes.’ Katherine’s face was impassive as she scanned the contract that had just come through on her personal feed.

‘A passenger carrier? Really?’ Angel was not impressed. ‘So what? We just shoot the thing out of space? Murder another fifty civvies in cold blood? What a brilliant move for our rep sheets that’s going be.’

‘No,’ Katherine spoke with the exaggerated clarity of somebody coaching a very stupid person in the art of standing still. ‘We don’t need to take out the whole ship. We can force an evac; make it look like a tragic accident during a perfectly innocent hijacking.’

‘Perfectly
innocent
hijacking? Kind of an oxymoron there, girlfriend,’ Admin said.

Katherine glanced up from her tablet long enough to shoot a poisonous glare at him. ‘We only need to take out one pod; Senator Talky.’ ‘A senator?’

It was Admin’s turn to look unnerved. He’d remained a ghastly shade of grey since leaving Eddie’s office earlier so it wasn’t exactly hard work. Now the three of them were propping up the bar at Sue’s, a row of full drinks in front of them. Sue was standing behind the counter cleaning glasses, listening with concern drawn across her stubbly face.

‘They bleed just like you and me at the end of the day,’ she said.

‘Yes, but that blood generally has a higher bounty on it than you or
I
,’ Admin replied, stressing the ‘I’ for grammatical correctness. ‘More to the point, they usually come heavily guarded.’

‘Intel says the senator is travelling low profile on ‘private business’, so there won’t be any security,’ Katherine said still scanning the contract. ‘Looks like an inside job. My guess? His wife judging by the thumbnail of the buxom redhead posted under the notes for ‘private business’.’

‘Well, it doesn’t seem like you have much choice anyway,’ said Sue. ‘Quite apart from your mounting debt, to me it seems like Eddie will be after your own precious blood if you stick around here. Not to mention the rest of the Cypher Punks who are definitely not on your buddy list right now.’

DORIS started chucking processors again and they all turned to the bot.
Easy to forget it’s there until it opens its annoying data-trap,
thought Angel.

‘This is an accurate assessment of the scenario. The safest place for all of you right now is off this rock. Even if the Cypher Punks don’t catch up with you, the bounty on your heads is going to look very attractive to most of the bottom-feeders scratching around in this cess pool of human flotsam.’

‘Charming,’ said Sue, frowning at the little bot as she polished glasses to a crystal sheen and lined them up neatly on the shelf behind her.

‘If anyone scans you you’ll light up like a slot machine paying out the jackpot,’ DORIS continued. ‘I don’t need to run an algorithm on the odds to tell you that you won’t last five-minutes if you’re trapped in a pirate infested rock when that bounty flashes up on your head. But with no ship or funds to buy a new one, you’re going nowhere fast.’

‘Headline news just in from the bureau of ‘stating the bleeding obvious’,’ Admin scoffed, slipping down off his stool as he waved across the bar to a man who’d just arrived. ‘I’ll be back in a jiffy, ladies.’

‘So, we take the contract, grab a couple of ships from the fleet and get off this rock until the shit has cooled down,’ Katherine said.

‘It’s hardly going to cool down for me if I’ve got to kill a senator,’ Angel said glumly.

‘Rubbish,’ said Katherine. ‘This one is a cinch - basic pirating 101. I’ll bring Admin along as gunner in the ‘Lance, you grab one of the new Vipers. Tasty little sluts they are. Tooled up to the nose-cone and they’ve got really good shields; high manoeuvrability too. We’ll ambush the Dolphin as it crosses the Ogier-Basnom radiation belt; there are lots of big rocks in that area so we should be able to hide nice and cold until they are practically on top of us. When they get there we attack - force an evac - and once they’re all out Admin will make lots of noise with the dumbfire cannon; keep their attention on us while you scan for the senator. You only need to crack his pod; trust me, his face will take approximately thirty seconds to boil off his skull in that radiation. So just nudge the pod into the path of a space rock. As long as no one clocks you doing it there won’t be any digital footprint. No weapon’s signature to ID you. It’ll look like he evaced into the path of a meteorite. Just a tragic accident during a low-key hijacking. Boohoo, tough shit - but dead is dead is dead at the end of the day.  If he’s really travelling in deep cover he won’t even be on the manifest. Boom. Problem solved.’

Angel sat there sucking on her bottom lip. It did sound like a pretty good plan - apart from the bit about her having to seek out and murder a senator of course.

DORIS whirred up to contribute. ‘I have calculated the odds of success for this plan and they are encouragingly high. 73.8% in fact. Exceptional under the circumstances.’

 ‘What about the other twenty-six percent?’

‘Twenty-six point two,’ DORIS corrected annoyingly. ‘What do you mean, what about it?’

‘I mean, what happens if the plan doesn’t succeed? What’s the alternative that has a one in four chance of being the outcome … approximately,’ Angel added this last to pre-empt any mathematical corrections from DORIS.

The bot’s processors chucked a few more times before it said plainly, ‘I am a computer, not a fortune teller.’

Angel glanced at Katherine, her face a picture of pent up nerves. ‘I don’t think I can do it Katherine. I’m sorry, but I don’t want to let you down while we’re out there. I just … I can’t kill the senator in cold blood.’

 ‘Oh, don’t be such a pussy,’ Katherine said topping up Angel’s glass and slapping her encouragingly on the shoulder. ‘If it makes you feel any better just remember he’s a cheating bastard. Do it for his poor wife. Anyway, I’d have thought you’d be getting over your first-kill jitters by now. What is this? Number three?’

‘I … I’m …’ Angel began to object, but then Admin hoisted himself back on to the stool between them grinning like a fuel-scooper. He held up a little glass bottle of green liquid and gave it a shake. ‘Okay girls, it’s time for some bonding. There has been way to much stress around here lately. Am I right, my dear lady Dread?’

The dread-headed pirate smiled begrudgingly. ‘Very gallant, sir.’

Admin loaded up the dropper. It sparkled like emeralds in the light from the holo-commercials lining the back wall of the bar. Suddenly a shadow fell across it. It was Sue, leering down at Admin from six-feet-six-inches in platform heels - a menacing sight even without the chest hairs peeking out of the pink crocheted tank top.

‘If you’re going to do that filthy shit at least have the decency to take it to a booth. I don’t want every space-waster walking past this joint thinking it’s okay to get trashed in here.’

* * *

Several hours later Angel found herself ambling without purpose through the back alleys and caverns of the Hollows, weaving in and out of the hubbub of fire pits and homemade stalls that made up the casual economy. Hawkers and dealers offered all manner of goods (and bads) for sale to whoever had creds, while broken gamblers and stumbling drunks wandered through the musty fug. Buskers plucked half-heartedly at makeshift instruments here and there - there wasn’t much generosity making its way out of the pockets of the milling thugs, so they did it more to amuse themselves than anything else. It was hot and grimy; the air stank of hardship and toil, much like the corridors and chambers of the commercial district back home on Slough Orbital.

She’d managed to resist Admin’s repeated offers of a few drops of the green liquid “to make her sparkle”. Not only had she become acutely aware that nothing was given away from the goodness of a donors heart around here, but she also wanted to remain in better control of her destiny than last time. Sadly this resolve had not extended beyond the small bottle of narcs though. She’d still managed to consume half her body mass in hard liquor, which Sue had been happy enough to add to her tab. Feeling the press of bodies and rising heat in the bar beginning to make her feel claustrophobic Angel had decided to get out and clear her head.

She wondered dully what her parents were making of all this. There wasn’t much love lost between her and her mother, and her father had always been so busy with the political and business machinations of running the station that she hardly knew him. But part of her hoped they might still be worried, at least a little.

She stopped by a fire pit where a cluster of droopy-eyed ex-revellers were listening to a busker pluck out a melancholy tune on a homemade instrument. The music suited her mood. She sat on an empty chunk of rock, enjoying the warmth of the fire on her knees and cheeks as she closed her eyes and got lost in the wistful aria. The alcoholic buzz started swirling around inside her head, waltzing her senses in an off-balance dance.

‘Smoke?’

Angel was startled out of her daze. She opened her eyes to see a long smoking pipe hovering just in front of her face. Attached to the pipe was a hand, which her eyes traced all the way back along an outstretched arm to a smiling face.

‘Uh, no. Thanks. I don’t,’ said Angel, wrinkling her nose as a tendril of smoke from the glowing bulb got a little too familiar with her nostrils. 

A hand from her other side darted in and snatched up the pipe so it could continue on its trip around the circle. The pipe-profferer observed her curiously. ‘Have we met?’

 ‘Uh, I don’t think so.’

The player finished plucking out his mournful ballad and started strumming something a little more upbeat. A few of the heads around the fire began wobbling along, vaguely in time with the rhythm. His instrument was a bit like a guitar, but twice the size and with a lot more strings. Angel couldn’t focus well enough to count them right now, but she reckoned there to be about fifteen. The body of the instrument was made out of a steel drum that just about fit into the player’s lap. Its crudely cut neck jutted out across the lap of the person sitting next to him. It looked quite dangerous, as if it would slice your flesh open if you brushed up too close to the jagged edge.

Even the musical instruments around here look thuggish,
thought Angel. For all its aggressive appearance though, the sounds it produced were broad and resonant. ‘I’m pretty sure I recognise you. Are you famous then?’

Angel’s insides tightened a notch. She looked at the friendly face to her right, now scrunched up at the edges with the strain of recall.  He was a middle-aged man, average size, average height, average everything; the kind of ordinary person you’d never be able to describe adequately enough for an ID sketch to be drawn. There was something about him though. Angel’s own memory receptors started jangling. ‘Hmm, maybe. I kind of recognise you too.’

They both stared at each other for a while in a stalemate of vague recognition before he stuck his hand out into the smoky air between them. ‘John Graham. I run the map exchange up on level four; by the export hangar? Could we have met there?’

 ‘Nope. I’m new round here. Angel Rose.’ Angel took the offered hand and it delivered a short, firm handshake. ‘Ever been to Slough?’ she asked.

 ‘Nope.’ Stalemate again. ‘I get this a lot to be honest,’ John Graham said. ‘People thinking they know me? I guess I just have one of those faces?’

‘Guess so,’ said Angel and went back to watching the fire crackle and burn, occasionally sending excitable little sparks twirling into the air.

‘I’ve definitely seen you somewhere though. Oh, wait! Hang on, Slough? That’s it! That’s where I know you! You were all over the buzz feeds earlier today!’

Angel’s heart sunk to new depths in search of a hiding place as several of the people zoning out around the fire pit started to pay attention.

‘Yes! Yes!’ John carried on in an unhelpfully loud and excited voice. ‘You’re the station commander’s brat who went on a killing spree before murdering her naval captain fiancé and taking off with a lesbian lover! You are, aren’t you?’

‘No, wait. What?’ Angel was horrified. She hadn’t actually read the stories about them as the headlines had seemed damning enough, but all this?

 ‘Yes! I read all about it in Cee-Lebs! Wow … you are a proper hard core bitch! You look fatter in real life though.’

‘Hey!’

‘So, how much are you worth? Come on. There must be quite a price on your head after taking out the navy dude? Dear Lady that takes some balls! How the shit did you flatten a fully armed Corvette in your little Cobra?’

The budding interest around the fire became a soft murmur as several clusters of people discussed also having read something about her story on the feeds today too.

‘Hey,’ John addressed the fire dwellers in general. ‘Has anyone got a scanner? Let’s see how much this bitch is worth!’

Immediately three people pointed body scanners in her direction; sensing the change in atmosphere the guitar-thing player stopped strumming and stood, dragging his oversized instrument away from the growing tension. Angel stood too, holding her palms out to face the scanners as if trying to ward off their presumptuous probing. ‘Look, I …’

Someone whistled.

‘Fifteen-K?’ John Graham was looking at the readout on one of the scanners. ‘That’s a bit disappointing actually. I would have hoped for double that.’

‘I dunno Johnny,’ said a woman with a gravelly voice and drooping beehive on the other side of the fire. ‘Could get a nice weapons upgrade with fifteen-K. Maybe even tank up the hyperdrive engines.’

Angel felt their eyes on her, assessing her, weighing her up like a piece of meat.

‘Not sure it’s worth breaking house sanctions though Laura,’ John Graham replied. ‘I’ve got a lot tied up here, in the map exchange and whatnot.’

Droopy-beehive turned to two scruffy young men sitting beside her. ‘Joel? Dan? Fancy rolling the dice on whether anyone will even miss her? Let alone care if we cash in the bounty?’

Both men looked confused, having had far too much to smoke to really understand the full implications of the question. The woman sighed, her beehive sagging a little more.