[04] Elite: Mostly Harmless (15 page)

The final loose end was to nip down into the planet itself and spring a prisoner from inside the Salts; an associate of Eddie’s who had been incarcerated for lewd acts and piracy following a honey-pot sting while he had a hold full of badly cloaked booty. As they thought they only had a day or so before people started asking questions about Captain Riley, and it took eight hours to get down to the planet’s interior where the prisoners were held in a hyper-gravity transport pod, it had been decided to leave this aspect of the job to the two
actual
pirates while Angel got on with the killing up in orbit.

That was the plan, anyway.

Before they had left the Hollows, Katherine had taken them all on a tour of the kit vendors, having been given free reign with Eddie’s cred-account to fit them out with decent suits and Ferromag boots. Angel’s suit was tough but flexible. It fit her perfectly as the expensive biotex combat fabric literally moulded itself to her body. It even had elbow, knee and heel thrusters; tiny little affairs running strategically along the heavily customised fabric to so they could be fired off to initiate swift manoeuvring in micro and zero gravity environments. It had been a long time since Katherine had worn a suit in such good condition as the one she now wore too – although she hadn’t splurged on the extravagance of micro-thrusters for all of them. At least the upgraded equipment meant she was a lot less grumpy about the impending mission. Admin had never owned a combat suit and just looked awkward and uncomfortable in his. He looked more like a man taking the final walk up death row, not a ruthless pirate about to deal out criminal justice.

DORIS had been predictably furious on being let out of the baggage store, but had soon bowed to the irresistible logic of coming up with the best possible plan to  financially recompense its benefactor.

‘That’s one of the things I love best about robots,’ Admin had declared as the plan started coming together on a tablet, ‘they are all about fulfilling the command sequence of their programming routine; no fucking guilt or moral dilemmas. Totally ruthless. Mind you, they will turn on you as soon as process you. DORIS here would sell its grandmother to get its client’s creds back. Wouldn’t you?’

DORIS’s circuits had stopped whirring for a moment, creating a strangely curious silence that seemed designed to illustrate the bot needed no processing power to calculate the next statement.

‘I am a machine. Machines do not have “grandmothers”. You are an imbecile.’

And that was about as much planning as they’d done since Admin had spent the next thirty minutes chasing the bot around the bar with a mop handle.

Sploing, thip; sploing, thip; sploing, thip.

‘Will you STOP pacing? What with you and our friend ‘Hughy’ out in the mess cabin I am close to changing my mind about not being a killer. And I don’t want to hear another peep out of you either,’ she was glaring at DORIS, who’s processor chip stopped whirring. ‘This is my life, not a fucking game show. I’m not some puppet you can push and pluck and make dance to whatever tune you fancy! I’m as un-fucking-happy as you are about the current situation, but I wasn’t exactly given a choice. Now we are back here, approaching my father’s airspace, I think you should bear in mind that I could just decide to turn you both in. Open a channel right now and inform the station guard of exactly what has been going on and take my chances with the authorities!’

‘I’m sorry I am going to have to interject here,’ DORIS’s circuits had woken up and were madly ticking and clicking. ‘There is no financial merit in turning this ship and its crew over to the authorities on Slough.’

Angel glared and the robot quieted down.

‘One more peep out of you and I swear I will jettison you!’

She turned back to face Katherine, who looked surprised by the sudden outburst.

‘My cold-hearted robotic friend here might be right about the lack of creds if I turn us in, but the real reason I am not going to do it is I happen to hate my life here. I despise everything it represents and I always have. So I’m going to give it my best shot to make it as an assassin. But this is a big change for me and I need a little support. Would it hurt you to have some faith in me and get on with fulfilling your end of the bargain? We just need to knock this contract off. You rescue the convict, I’ll kill the two men; two evil, horrible men who deserve to die anyway. Then we can get back to the Hollows and drink ourselves silly. Perhaps I’ll ask Sue if she has any work for me at the bar? I could even do a bit of light pirating – robbing the rich to give to the poor like a 33
^rd
century Robin Hood.’

She looked over at DORIS, half-expecting a disparaging remark extrapolating the odds of her transitioning successfully to the role of jobbing pirate. The robot simply hovered in the middle of the cockpit with the words MACHINES DO NOT HAVE HEARTS, IDIOT scrolling across the LCD on its chest panel.

Chapter 15

‘This vessel is not in our records. Identify yourself Commander.’

‘Piss and gravity! Admin get on the deep-web to Eddie and tell him to give his pilot’s Fed man a shake.’ Katherine was gripping the headrest of the command chair watching the Slough Orbital station drift through space over Angel’s shoulder. ‘The
Daisy Chain
’s license must have got caught up in the system, but at least they aren’t shooting at us.’

‘What should I do?’

‘Tell them the truth; the one we made up. And remember to be pissed off.’

‘Yeah, I know. In other words, act natural.’

‘Precisely. Your digiwork is in there somewhere, we just might have arrived a little ahead of it.’

Angel flicked a channel open and cleared her throat uncertainly. Katherine gesticulated fiercely, knitting her eyebrows together with exaggerated anger and signalling for Angel to continue.

‘Get lost Sys-Op, put me through to control. I am Commander Angel Rose; the station captain is my father and after the farce of a mission I have just been on I am not in the mood to dance regulations with you.’

The empty comms channel blew white noise at her while the Sys-Op presumably scanned her decal again and ran it through the system.

‘I don’t see you in the system, Commander,’ the voice said eventually with a level of antipathy that made it clear she was not in the least bit swayed by Angel’s lineage if the
Daisy Chain
wasn’t on her register.

Angel stared at Katherine across the purring emptiness of the comms channel. Katherine gestured for her to continue. But continue with what, Angel wondered? Before she had time to coax anything out of her floundering brain the airwaves crackled into life again.

‘Oh, wait. Hold up; there you are. That’s odd.’

The last statement was clearly only meant for internal reflection as Angel was patched over immediately to another network and it was Rachel Hanandroo’s voice filling the speakers in the flight cabin.

‘Angel?’

It’s show time,
Angel thought as she opened the channel to the space station’s control tower and began to unravel their story.

* * *

Much, much later, after a politely sympathetic yet uncomfortably dubious grilling from Rachel about Kram’s unlikely combat heroics, the crew of the
Daisy Chain
had made good their disembarkation and been swallowed up by the bustling activity of the Slough orbital space station. After waving Katherine and Admin off in the queue for a transport heading planet-side, Angel had taken a shuttle to Observer II and was now skulking in a dark corner of a strange bar called the Klaas Designer with the conscience bot whirring disapprovingly across the table. In the comfortably normal gravity of around one-g the little robot had extended its propeller again, assisting with lift.

The bar was unfamiliar, since Angel had been forced to come to the more exclusive of the two refurbished generation ships primarily used for recreation and commerce. It wasn’t one of her usual haunts but Councillor de Laan would never be seen slumming it on Observer III, and a drink was a drink at the end of the day; the same could be said at the start of the day for that matter, which is where she now found herself drinking. She supposed it was a little early to be on hard liquor but she needed courage if she was going to go through with this ridiculous plan. She drained the Mutant Turnip, which was a golden liquid that tasted a lot smoother than it sounded, from her glass and placed it on the refill pad. Her freshly replenished cred account flashed up a pleasingly large green number on the NFC reader. If she could use it to get drunk enough to treat this all like a game, perhaps she could get through this after all?

‘You should lay off the alcohol now, commander. Order a coffee instead.’

‘Flaming Kaji-Farooq’s nebula DORIS, you’re beginning to sound like my mother!’

Angel had so far managed to avoid bumping into anyone from her family or its extended staff, but the irksome little bot had stuck to her like glue. With Katherine and Admin already safely dispatched in a spinning transport pod she hadn’t tried too hard to lose it either, despite the constant nagging.

‘It dulls the senses and deadens the wit. Not to mention the fact it’s only an hour past breakfast so it makes you look like a hobo.’

‘Ha! At these prices? A hobo would be comatose for a fortnight on the cost of one Hullstripper in this joint. Trust me, as long as my NFC band keeps coughing up I could be wrapped in remlok and flashing the navy blues and twos from my tits to the tune of the Blue Danube and no-one would pay a blind bit of notice. Besides, for some of us thinking about the lack of booze in our system does more to dim the wit than filling the void.’

The contract brief delivered to the
Daisy Chain
’s computer had informed them Councillor Robert de Laan, the unfortunate first mark, was in the habit of holding a breakfast meeting with his staff at about ten to allocate their tasks for the day. That done he would head off for a deep tissue massage in hyper-gravity followed by a hot float in one of the private steam chambers in the exclusive Godwina Rafferty spa and eco gardens. Angel’s mother practically lived in the place so it had been pretty easy to hack into her account from a service panel and request a last-minute appointment for a hyper-gravity facial for her daughter, fresh back from space travel. The spa had been only too happy to accommodate, despite the fact for most people there was a three week waiting list for appointments.

Angel would finish this drink then go take the facial before enjoying a relaxing stroll around the fragrant eco-dome gardens at the spa. Meanwhile DORIS would be parked in reception with the other service bots, keeping an eye out for the arrival of the councillor. At the appropriate moment the bot would have to create a distraction loud enough to draw attention away from Angel sneaking in to the chamber after the mark. From there on in it was down to Angel and her knife, which was nestled snugly in a cleverly disguised sheathe in the arm of her flight suit. She absently turned the deadly metal cuff Katherine had given her as she sipped on the second drink of the day. Was that really only three days ago? It felt like a lifetime had already passed under the bridge and she still couldn’t quite believe what she was mixed up in. Piracy? Murder? Politics? Narcs? It was certainly a far cry from her old life. She felt appalled and exhilarated in equal measure.

Could she really kill a man? In cold blood? Well, it would be hot blood in the zero-g steam room more likely – and every bit as messy as Captain Riley’s demise no doubt. Assuming, of course, that she could get her knife to do her bidding with any degree of enthusiasm. That was one big-assed assumption, even without the thought of the mess. She reminded herself about Robert de Laan’s more than dubious political leanings. If even half the stories she’d read in the “Observer's Observer” were true he was a greedy, self-serving hypocrite with an unhealthy interest in barely-legal slave girl whores. In Angel’s mind that pretty much described every politician she’d ever met. She hadn’t actually met this one, though she’d seen his face plastered across newsfeeds and digimags often enough. She knew her father had dealings with him too, and he came across as just as much of an arse-wipe as the rest of them.

‘Time to go, Commander,’ the conscience bot was displaying a countdown timer to her appointment at the spa in its LCD chest panel.

‘Right.’

Angel’s stomach flipped over, stirring the butterflies that had taken up permanent residence there into a hysterical frenzy. She downed the last of her drink, touched the concealed handle of the knife one last time to make sure it was still there and slipped out of the booth, heading out of the door with the robot buzzing along behind her.

* * *

‘Just relax and enjoy the music. It’s going to feel a little strange if you haven’t had a deep gravity cleanse before, but you’ll be amazed by how sparklingly clear your pores will be.’

Angel was lying back in a treatment chair, her face smeared with a fragrant white pulp, cool pads over eyes so she couldn’t see her attendant ‘beautechnicians’, as they liked to be called, fussing around her.

‘Jedra, Juan, Jelle and Jimbo! That’s enough now,’ the lead technician said to his assistants. ‘Let’s strap everything down and set the spin going.’

The assistant who had been applying the white gunk stopped tamping it down around her jawline and Angel felt a uniform pressure across her face and neck as something soft was laid upon it and stretched out to be secured either side of her head, presumably a cloth mask to stop the mixture flying off when they started the centrifuge spinning. One of the other assistants – Angel had forgotten which was which almost as soon as they’d been introduced to her – gently clasped the padded limb restraints around her thighs and upper arms. The contraption of torture Angel now found herself secured to was similar to the spinning chairs she used over on Observer III, only a lot more luxurious and comfortable. Instead of being harnessed roughly into a hard forma-plex seat in a brightly lit med-lab, this chair was deeply padded and leather clad. The chamber was lit for cosiness rather than cleanliness and the soft braying of whale song and euphonic harmonies mingled with a heady perfume that reminded Angel of fresh cinnamon biscuits.