[04] Elite: Mostly Harmless (14 page)

The only downside was it also required she become a ruthless killer.

‘Assassin?’

‘Assassin.’

‘Are you serious? I get a guilt trip when I have to purge an outbreak of the Trumbles. How am I ever going to kill a person?’

They were settled in a booth at Sue’s awaiting an extravagant breakfast Eddie had ordered with the enthusiasm of a man who hadn’t tasted hot food for an epoch. ‘From the way you looked at me this morning I’d say you have the killer instinct.’ ‘That was when I thought you’d, you know …’ Angel blushed again and got cross with herself, and him as he laughed across the table. ‘Just imagine them in their longjohns with a morning-glory. Oh come on, it’ll be fun! I’ve got a nice new ship for you; I’m going to offer Dread and Admin a sack of creds to crew it so they can show you the ropes; and the guns; and maybe the knives as well.’

With perfect timing Admin slid into the seat beside Angel. ‘Did I hear someone mention my name in the same sentence as a sack full of creds?’

He bumped knuckles with Eddie as Katherine flopped drearily into the seat opposite, clutching her head and moaning.

‘Nah, I said a sack full of crud, but then I realised you’re already full of that, so I shan’t bother.’

There was a bit more banter to and fro as the newcomers ordered some food and two steaming plates of pretty much everything in the kitchen landed in front of Angel and Eddie.

‘I don’t do baby-sitting, sorry.’ Katherine was picking unenthusiastically over a bowl of stodgy porridge, looking like hell. ‘You don’t have a lot of choice sister,’ Eddie’s face was serious for the first time since they’d sat down. ‘With the Pearl holed up in Medusa 3 you’ve got extended berthing to cover, not to mention your club subscription, rent for Sue, and by the look of you, you could do with a lot more protein in your diet. It’s all very well lying low, but you gotta eat and pay your dues. I’m offering a tidy fee for you to help get our newest club member up to scratch. One trip, three quick jobs, and then you’ll be back in the Hollows with enough creds to pay off the pilot’s fed and clear your bounty. Then we can get you back out on the space-waves and business as usual. Am I right, or am I right?’

Across the table Admin was looking rather green around the edges.

‘As for you my young friend, you don’t get off this rock enough. The ‘Lance I’ve lined up for the job needs a hard-point gunner and we all know Dread couldn’t hit a fuel scooper with a dumbfire from fifty metres. Hopefully there won’t be any need for shooting, of course; my guy in the pilot’s fed should be able to get you in nice and quiet. But whatever happens after that you’re on your own.’

Admin swallowed hard. ‘I’ll get sick Eddie, you know how I am in space. What use am I to anyone if I’m barfing my guts into zero-g?’

Angel looked horrified.

“You’ll be fine once they start shooting at you,” the humour returned to Eddie’s eyes and he winked at Angel across the table. “It’s amazing how quickly the sting of unfriendly tracer-fire can settle a queasy tummy.”

“‘Look, I appreciate the offer and all,’ Angel said, her stomach doing a little flip of its own at the prospect of having to carry out a contract kill, ‘but I’m not a murderer. You must have someone better for the job?’

‘Ah, but you are perfect for the job my pretty little assassin,’ he grinned at her and shoved a huge forkful of hashed-potato into his mouth. Once he’d chewed it into partial submission he continued, spraying little bits of crispy potato across the table as he munched and talked simultaneously. ‘I have a few …
issues
that need dealing with in and around Slough. It’s not an easy place to get to with a rep like mine. For the time being you have a squeaky clean sheet and are pretty well-connected, at least your family is. Who is going to question the station captain’s daughter when she heads over to the luxury spa cruiser, where her mother practically lives? Once there you can deal out swift justice to a very naughty man who double-crossed me in a property deal, run a couple more errands to tie up some loose ends in Slough, and you’ll be out before the pilots’ fed have even had time to process the digiwork – thanks to my friends on the inside of course.’

‘I don’t think you’re hearing me, Eddie,’ Angel’s voice was stern. She felt it was time to draw a line under the matter. ‘I am not a killer. I don’t want to become a killer. You’re going to have to look elsewhere I’m afraid.’

Point made she picked up a slice of bread and mopped up the last of the bean stew on her plate, shoving it into her mouth and licking her fingers clean. Eddie’s face switched from jovial to deadpan with irrational speed.

‘As pretty as your arse is you’re not exactly in a position to negotiate, or had you forgotten you’re currently enjoying the hospitality of a gang of nefarious pirates with no creds to pay your way?’

Angel looked down at her empty plate and swallowed hard.

‘Yes my dear, a very expensive plate of tucker, not to mention the tab you ran up last night with Sue and my young administrator here. What? Did you think all that shit was for fresh air and giggles? Everything in this rock comes at a price, and the only other employment on offer right now is whoring in the Drag-den. I’ve already seen how stingy you are with your fleshy bits, so I’m guessing it’s the assassin’s life for you, for you; the assassin’s life for you!’

He had broken into song at this last and was now grinning manically at her again. Angel goldfished back at him, speechless and flushing hotly.

‘Oh, get over yourself you stupid bitch,’ he said with a fondness completely at odds with calling her a bitch. He leaned across the table and punched her playfully in the arm. ‘It’ll be fun! You’ll see. Now get out of here all of you and make your preps.’ His expression switched to black intensity again. ‘Katherine, you’re in charge – you need to come up with a cover story. I don’t care what it is; just make sure it’s low-key. You should use that robot thing to help you.’

They looked around, Angel realising for the first time that day DORIS was nowhere to be seen.

‘I shut it in a kit locker outside Wilde’s Farglebiter last night,’ Eddie said, reaching into a small breast pocket and flipping a digicard on the table between them. ‘There’s the key, I’ll transfer deets of the contract to your feeds later. I want to be alone now so bugger off.’

Chapter 14

Katherine paced, in as much as one could pace on a ferromagnetic floor grid. The Fer-de-Lance was stuffed with all the extras and mods you could want and Katherine was the tiniest bit jealous she wasn’t in the command chair.
Daisy Chain
was the vessel’s name; the gauche humour of the moniker evident when you realised her flanks were lined with heavily modified rail guns and other chain-fired munitions. They were in the final jump phase of the trip back to Slough and Katherine was still trying to plug holes in the flimsy cover-story they’d come up with collectively. Her dreadlocks floated about her face like a nest of maddened serpents, giving her the look of Medusa – the one of ancient earth mythology fame rather than the snaking docking arms used to bring ships inside the Hollows. The electromagnetic studs in the soles of her boots made a strange harmonic sucking noise as they grasped and released the ferromagnetic walkway. Grasp, release; grasp, release,
sploing, thip; sploing, thip
. The sound was beginning to wear on Angel’s patience.

‘It’ll be fine Dread. I thought you were supposed to be the cool one at this party.’

‘KATHERINE! Flaming fucking nebulas Angel! If you can’t even get that right then we are going to get made as pirates even before we touch down on the launch pad! Is it any wonder I am stressed when I have to work with such fucking amateurs?’

There was a clacking, whirring sound that set Katherine’s teeth on edge as she knew it was the prelude to the bot offering an opinion. In the distance, through the open hatch and down the ship a little in the mess cabin, they could hear the heaving sound of Admin making an
actual
mess – hopefully into a vac-bag. Angel wrinkled up her nose at the thought of otherwise.

‘For once I agree with the pirate,’ DORIS bleeped seriously as the database polled itself for the hundredth time, sifting through a billion different possibilities in 4.7 seconds and finding very little of any comfort. This mission was incredibly risky under any circumstance, and with every star system they traversed the odds only got worse.

The plan was to dock at the space station and just act incredibly dumb if anybody mentioned Captain Riley. Until directly challenged to the contrary, they hadn’t seen him all week. Mental Eddie’s pilot’s Federation contact had suppressed the destruction of the
Retribution’s Fist
, hopefully, although the order had gone out very late in the day and there was some speculation as to whether it had made it in time before the uniweb was updated. Assuming no-one started shooting at them when they approached Slough Orbital the cover story was that Angel had been ambushed after leaving Slough, making it safely away only in the nick of time and thanks to the heroic (yet sadly fatal) actions of her escort, Commander Kram.

After a series of random hyperjumps made under the duress of extreme panic, Angel had limped in to the nearest friendly-looking planet to make repairs, only to find herself caught up in the middle of a planetary meltdown. It just so happened the entire system’s power grid had been built on technology that used gold as the core conductive material. It was unusual technology, but not unheard of in the extravagant courts of some Imperial systems. But the power grid was failing and without a seriously large shipment of gold the entire economy was about to implode, resulting in civil war and general anarchy.

Having made an absolute killing with her conveniently appropriate cargo of pure gold, tripling what the investor was originally hoping to make, Angel had taken the liberty of lightening his swollen ROI to the tune of one replacement ship – admittedly quite a bit bigger and better than the one she had started with; with more space for cargo and a weapons array to be fearful of, but she’d figured she’d earned the pay rise by negotiating such a great price for the gold. DORIS had instructed Angel to hammer home the entitlement issue with grumpy emphasis right from the start if she wanted the story to seem credible.

‘After all, the best ruses are the ones that lie within the outer hull of truth,’ the bot had lectured once it became clear this plan was the best chance it had to get its client’s investment back. ‘So you need to dig deep into your extensive repertoire of ‘dark and pouty’ and try not to get asked too many questions.’

So, having supposedly tripled “Mister Corporate Affairs” cred count (DORIS would have to make sure news of their return didn’t get back to him straight away as they didn’t actually have the creds to back up the story), the plan continued that Angel and her new crew would take a couple of days off, go for a drink; find a card game; the usual kind of shenanigans you get up to when you’ve come into some creds. She’d have to feign a sudden interest in luxury spa treatments, which didn’t sit well with her at all, but the first kill on the contract was a politician who was well-known for his love of a mid-morning hot float. Angel’s mother’s influence should give her access to Councillor Robert de Laan with his guard down; catch him unarmed and unprotected, and possibly even undressed. While she was busy despatching the councillor DORIS would hack into the station network, digging around in the spa’s scheduling sub-routines to erase any record of his visit that morning and shutting down the chamber his body would be stashed in for “essential maintenance”. Hopefully this would buy them enough time before the body was discovered to get the other parts of the contract done and be away, nice and quiet.

Even though the thought of what was ahead made her feel sick to her stomach, Angel wasn’t feeling too bad about this first target, morally. She was still totally against the idea of killing someone (and for the most part doubted she’d actually be able to do it), but if it had to happen to someone she couldn’t think of anyone she’d rather it be. Robert de Laan was a worm; a political weasel who had scratched his way to the middle echelons of power through blood-influence rather than brain-power, and then sat there doing more harm than good with his self-serving policies and greedy deals. Yes, he was influential, but he wouldn’t be missed that much – existentially speaking – and hopefully physically for at least a day if they were going to get away clean.

Once de Laan had been despatched they could get on with the “loose ends” as Eddie had put it.

Loose end number one; collect a debt from one of Eddie’s more troublesome dealers. Having let the interest on his “loans” get out of control the proprietor of the Cheese Wheel, which as well as being a popular wine bar was THE place to go to buy recreational narcs, was about to pay the ultimate price for messing with a pirate; his life.

‘Isn’t that like cutting off your life-support tube to spite your own face?’ Angel had asked when they were reading through the contract together. ‘I mean, how can the bar guy pay the debt if I kill him? Could we just, maybe, break his kneecaps?’

‘It’s not about the debt; it’s a question of rep.’

‘You sound like a rapper,’ Admin said weakly, leaning against the hatch as he turned gradually greener.

‘Go suck on an anal cyst, twinkle-toes’ Katherine had growled and that was the last they had seen of him as he’d spent the rest of the trip in the mess cabin hurling his load. Katherine had turned back to face Angel.

‘The dude isn’t going to pay. It’s been obvious for some weeks now. He’s making some moral stance about profit-share and our friend and benefactor, Mr Mental, has decided negotiations are over. If you don’t stamp on uprisings like this they‘ll all be at it. That’s the way it is with us pirates. We have to be … you know; scary and shit.’

So the owner of the Cheese Wheel would pay with his life – and while Angel still thought it was academic as she’d never be able to kill the man, in theory if someone HAD to die she didn’t have too big a compunction about this one either, since he was one of the widest, filthy funnels of cheap narcs that made it on to her father’s space station.