[04] Elite: Mostly Harmless (20 page)

 ‘Oh, talking of contracts,’ Admin threw the disabled holo-bug on the dashboard, ‘I should go check on our cargo. He’ll be spitting alabaster chips we made him wait so long cooped up in that body pod.’

 He headed shakily out of the cockpit towards the cargo hold, already beginning to go a little green around the edges as the effects of space travel started churning his insides up.

The prisoner they had sprung. Angel had completely forgotten about him too.

A few minutes later Admin came back in to the cockpit, face ashen. Angel stopped fiddling with the flight controls when she saw his expression. ‘What?’

‘He’s dead.’

‘What do you mean dead?’

‘I mean dead; deceased, expired, extinct. How many different kinds of dead do you need?’

‘
How
is he dead?’ Katherine said, her face going pale.

‘Somehow the environmental controls got switched over and now the man is fertiliser. Okay? I don’t know how, but we might as well be fertiliser too when Mental Eddie finds out we pulped his BFF.’ Admin’s face was whitewashed with dread as he stood in the door to the cockpit, panic rising along with the bile in his stomach. ‘Are you sure?’ Angel asked.

 ‘Well now gee, let me think. Was it the lack of vital signs being displayed on the health monitor or the fact the pod has already partially decomposed the body that gave it away? His
face was bloody melting!
Of course I’m bloody sure.’

‘Shit!’ Katherine hissed through gritted teeth.

‘I definitely turned the life support mode to passenger stasis,’ Admin whined. ‘I
tripled checked
it before we stacked the alabaster on him. I don’t understand how it could have flipped over to fertiliser.’

Katherine was pacing again.
Sploing, thip; sploing, thip.
‘We are so many shades of screwed.’

DORIS’s circuits started ticking. They all turned expectantly towards the diminutive robot. ‘That is correct,’ it said unhelpfully.

* * *

The
Daisy Chain
popped out of hyperspace like a champagne cork into treacle; the impossible speed of interdimensional travel ripped out from underneath them like a cosmic marble running on to the deep shag-pile of everyday space. They’d made a couple of pretty good jumps and had landed, so far unmolested, within a few minutes pulse-flight of the Hollows. Angel powered down the ship’s systems and watched as the scanners sketched out the lay of the sector. They shouldn’t have any trouble with the locals wearing this decal, but it never hurt to know what you were flying into. They all sat in silent coldness as they waited for the scanners to complete their work. The cockpit crackled eerily as the windscreen iced over, the asteroid belt glinting here and there as chunks of metallic space rock caught the light of the twin suns in the distance.

The scan finished sketching out the region and Angel breathed a sigh of relief. There was nothing between here and what she was rapidly starting to think of as home but cold, empty space.

‘So, we killed the two marks but couldn’t collect the “package” from down in the Salts on account of a tunnel blow out. Tragic accident. If we had only got there a few hours earlier, blah blah blah ... That’s the final version of the story?’

‘Yep,’ said Angel, feeling remarkably calm all things considered.

Admin looked dubious but Katherine just sighed. ‘It’s beyond crap, but it’s the only crap we have.’

 ‘I don’t know,’ said Angel trying to lighten the mood. ‘I think there is a pretty good load of it fermenting in a body pod down in the hold.’

‘SHIT!’ Katherine suddenly didn’t look so calm.

‘It wasn’t
that
bad a joke.’

‘No … I mean shit! You’re right … we still have the body in the pod. Fertiliser or not we’re going to have to explain it if we bring it into the Hollows. We might be lawless pirates but there are still taxes to be paid - of sorts. We’ll be scanned as we dock so the mob bosses can take their slice of the action, just like any legit space station.’

‘Ah …’ Angel realised she still had a lot to learn about pirating.

It was Admin’s turn to sigh. ‘I’ll go load him up into a missile launcher.’ He tromped miserably out of the cockpit again. ‘Do you think he will buy it?’ Angel asked.

Katherine just shrugged, sweeping her arm across her head to try and tame the viper’s nest of floating dreadlocks.

‘Depends.’

‘On what?’

‘Lots.’

‘Oh come on Katherine, you can give me more than that. This is happening to me too, you know?’

The pirate remained silent for a moment then sighed again. ‘I don’t know. Everything, nothing … it depend on the stars, the moons, the planetary alignment. It depends how full Eddie’s pods are, or and how empty his head is.’

 ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It means he is a dangerous man. And unpredictable; which makes him the worst kind of dangerous.’

Angel suddenly felt infuriated by how little control she had. A week ago she was a nobody; a regular trader shipping short order construction material for minimum wage. But she knew where she stood, even if it was in a bucket of dull dishwater. Now what? An intergalactic fugitive with a bounty on her head? Not to mention she was piloting a ship owned by a psychotic criminal who she was about to go and spin a line of bullshit to that was so thick she would probably need laxatives to get it out of her mouth. She was mixing with narc-runners, smugglers and murderers - thinking of them as her friends no less - and she still had no goid-fucking clue what was going on. Any of it.

Probably more than anything right now though, she needed a drink.

She suddenly exploded with pent up rage. ‘Well, I am a dangerous woman! I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask for any of this! You think I’m happy about being forced to become an assassin?’

 ‘Do you think anyone on this ship cares about your happiness? This isn’t a fucking star cruise, you know?’

Angel was stunned by the coolness of the reply. She had started to think of Katherine and Admin as her friends and the stark reminder that they were all just pirates at the end of the day hit home with a nasty shock. Katherine had the decency to look a tiny bit guilty.

‘Look, I doubt very much our story will fly, at least not very far or for very long; so none of us are likely to get paid. Whether this becomes a mortal issue for us will depend on the mood we find Eddie in; and that could go either way. He is a … complicated man. He’s spent his whole life on some kind of a personal crusade to avenge the death of his family. I don’t know the details and I wouldn’t gossip about them even if I did - he’s the only reason I’m here. But let’s just say the experience screwed up his head and he is … unbalanced.’

Angel listened carefully, wondering about the death of his family and who had done it? If he’d witnessed it all it could explain quite a lot. That kind of experience would definitely mess with your head. ‘How old was he?’

 ‘A teenager is all I know. Look Angel, back off okay? I get that you have a heart; you want to be friends and all blah-de-blah. But it’s not that easy for some of us to let people in, and I owe it to Eddie to watch his back. He was the one who rescued me from spacers that kidnapped me after all.’

‘Wow, really?’

Katherine nodded, eyes misting over with the memories again. ‘They had some map or grid reference he was after. I was rather preoccupied with my own troubles to take in the details. It was something about the source of the Thargoids though. My captors had picked it up in a raid on an outpost. Eddie had tracked them down and when he destroyed their ship he picked up my pod, brought me back to the Hollows; gave me a hole to dig down into until I was ready to come up for air again.’

Angel raised her eyebrows. ‘That sounds remarkably compassionate for a blood-thirsty, deranged pirate.’

Katherine laughed, genuinely this time. ‘Yeah, well. You could think that. Or you could look at the debt I racked up paying for food and lodgings in that black time and realise he’ll be cashing in on my misery for years to come - with interest. I might not be a sex slave any more, but I’m still a slave to my debt.’

Angel tapped on the hologram of the biggest rock in the asteroid belt in front of them, dragging a wireframe of it over to the navigation input. The word HOLLOWS printed out below it and Angel pushed her foot down on the main thruster. The cockpit shook slightly and got instantly warmer as the whole dash illuminated with flight readings. The windscreen defrosted and the engines wound up around them as the missile launcher popped a body pod full of nicely fermenting fertiliser out into bare space.

‘I guess we’re all slaves to that,’ Angel said pushing the flight lever forwards.

Chapter
2
0

‘Really?’

Angel wasn’t sure whether the tone in Eddie’s voice was sarcasm or disbelief. Neither was terribly positive though she decided. She looked at Katherine for help.

‘Look, Eddie,’ Katherine’s tone was conciliatory, exuding calm and reason. ‘Angel made the hits, both of them. Clean as a whistle. I’m sorry we couldn’t pick up Crawf but at least we got out nice and quiet. No nasty shoot ups; no damage to the
Daisy Chain
.’

Eddie kept looking at Angel, his eyes piercing through her with a dancing mix of cruelty and mirth that made her heart flutter in a peculiar way. ‘Nice and quiet you say? Quiet like a mouse? Or like a flea on the back of a mouse, perhaps?’

 ‘Err, yes. Something like that,’ Angel said, feeling the need to fill the air between her and that strange stare with words.

‘Really?’

There it was again; the mocking tone dancing around the edge of incredulity with madness as its partner.

‘Are you done?’

Angel looked at Katherine, then back to Eddie’s manic smile.

‘Done?’

‘Yes. Done. Finito. All dried up? Have you finished telling me stories?’

Silence was his only reply.

‘Good, then why don’t I tell you one? Better yet, I’ll let you read it for yourself shall I?’

He fiddled with a patch panel on his tablet momentarily and the screens lining the walls behind him started flickering from the commercial loop they had been playing, each showing a different network feed. Instead they displayed the front pages of all the news channels; big shouty headlines with attention grabbing summaries. Angel, Katherine and Admin found themselves staring at a bank of screens from which their own faces stared back at them on 3-D straplines in every possible size and style. Eddie started reading the headlines out, his voice tight with lunatic amazement.

‘FRONTIER NEWS: Slough Scandal! Station Commander’s daughter wanted in connection with double murder.’

‘THE IMPERIAL CITIZEN: The officer and the assassin! Top Navy man romantically linked to deadly killer!’

‘PILOTS FEDERATION NEWS CHANNEL: Inner ring uncovered! Suspected Federation mole goes underground.’

Angel, Katherine and Admin stood, slack-jawed as the screens behind Eddie filled over and over with crass insinuation and recriminating beats. ‘Oh, oh … and this is one of my favourites. Here, read this one.
PATRONISE: Cypher Punk smackdown! Is this the end for Eddie’s boys?
That one goes into particular detail about how some clown in an Eagle out-smarted some of the baddest pilots this side of Riedquat armed with a pulse shooter and a set of furry dice.’

They sat in silence as the fury boiled in Eddie’s face. ‘Do you have any nebula-screwing clue what kind of damage you have done? Murder? Intrigue? Imperial courts in meltdown? Anarchy? And lesbian, fucking sex? Could you have done anything else to make sure this story went fucking galactic?’

Angel blushed.

‘For the Lady’s sake, what part of “keep a low profile” did you not understand? It should have been a simple “in and out”. Instead I am top of the pops with the IISS, Interpol and for all I know Segondli & frigging Maenads too. The ticket on my head is so frigging high every bounty hunter and militia man this side of the Jix-Gromit asteroid belt are on my back. Even here, in pirate central I’m not really safe, considering the rep I have lost. Considering the bounties that are piling up on my head as every new piece of pilot’s federation fucking digiwork my contact was sitting on floats to the surface like a turd in a hot tub!’

There was more silence as Angel and the others studied their boots.

‘I’ve had to call the whole Thargoid-loving operation into deep dock. They are the laughing stock of the Hollows because of the space-shite you spun about the dogfight with your lover boy. I am on the brink of a mutiny. The only reason I’m holding it together is that I gave them enough recreational narcs to flatten a stampeding rhino. Meanwhile, to pay for all this therapy I have zero income coming in - are you getting this? ZERO income!’

Angel tried to think of something to say but her brain just stared at her mouth as if it were a piece of modern art. Eventually Katherine spoke. ‘We’ll put it right, Eddie. We’ll make it up to you.’

He rounded on her, making her flinch. ‘Oh you’re Scooby-doobling right you will sweet-cheeks.  All three of you. Mainly because you’re the only Thargoid-loving crew I have that isn’t too hot to leave the Hollows.’

 ‘Leave?’ Admin had started to go grey again at the thought of heading back out to space.‘Leave,’ Eddie agreed. ‘I have a job for you - tomorrow. A package to be collected and a score to be settled. This one will offset a good bit of the rep hit I’ve taken from the last few day’s antics. You’d better do it right or you will be taking a swim in the asteroid belt without an EVA suit. Got it?’

As the door to Eddie’s office closed behind them they breathed a collective sigh of relief.

‘Well, that went well I thought,’ said Admin, the shake in his voice betraying his true feelings.

Katherine and Angel just looked at him.

‘What? We’re alive aren’t we?’ he said.

Angel had to concede they were alive. But for how long was very debateable.