[04] Elite: Mostly Harmless (26 page)

From inside the darkness of reality she heard the clunking of hydraulics. It sounded like a big clock unwinding. She took off the gloves and skull cap, her eyes once again blinded for a few moments as pupils adjusted to this new exposure. She was back in the cavern, standing on the ball bearing platform, hands gripping the rail. The only difference from five minutes ago was that a display mounted on the wall opposite was now lit up like Chris Tink’s Day. Flashing lights danced beneath a deep coating of chalky dust. She ducked down below the hand rail and off the platform, standing in front of the vault door. Gripping the circular locking mechanism she gave an experimental nudge. Although her natural impulse was to expect the worst, some deep, incorrigible part of her still hoped it would turn. For once that hope was not in vain.

It turned; easily.

Thirty seconds later the huge internal mechanism of the lock gave a decisive
thunk
and a new crack around the edges of the vault door sighed with the levelling pressure of three centuries of separation. Grasping the wheel of the lock Angel leant back. It popped open as easily as the lock had turned and she stepped back as the heavy door swung effortlessly outwards. Behind the humungous, heavily fortified door, was a bit of a let-down.

Instead of a deep ponderous chamber filled with secrets and wealth, there was just a smaller door set into the wall at about shoulder height. This door was shaped like the letterbox entrance to Slough Orbital space station, Angel noted with a pang of nostalgia.  The slot wasn’t much bigger than a bread tin though. She tried the handle and it gave up its secrets in a disappointingly uncomplicated manner by just opening.

Inside was a book.

She reached through the narrow slot and grasped her prize with both hands. Elation flooded her veins threatening to carry her away. The book slid out smoothly and she held it up before her, reading the title.

Her eyes went wide.

As she read the title over and over, trying to take it in her heart shrugged on a thick coat of leaden dismay. This had the potential to change everything, and Angel didn’t think it would be for the better.

Chapter 25

Angel stood at the entrance to the cavern gazing down upon the chalky sketch of a landscape below. From this height the barren trees looked like complicated equations scratched out on a mad professor’s blackboard. She held the book in her right hand, weighing up her options. Eddie was going to go nuclear when he saw it.

‘Do you have it?’

Angel almost jumped out of her remlok mask. A movement below caught her eye. Then Mental Eddie was striding across the scraggy glade.

‘Do you
have
it?’

He was standing at the bottom of the rocky outcrop now, forty-feet down, reaching up for the book; beckoning for her to join him on the ground. His face was the picture of almost unbearable anticipation. Angel’s heart caught in her throat as she hugged the book a little closer. ‘I do … but … Eddie …’

An awkward moment passed as it became obvious Angel wasn’t going to climb down as expected. Eddie’s personal thrusters blasted and he starting rising up. A minute later their eyes met across fifteen-feet of eggy air as he hovered outside the mouth of the cave. He frowned and started drifting forwards under the power of his elbow thrusters, Angel shuffling back to make room for him to land. Glaring now he held out his hands for the book. When she hesitated again his expression bedded down into a fully formed scowl that chilled her blood.

‘Eddie, I’m not sure what you’re expecting … no, strike that. I know exactly what you’re expecting,’ she swallowed hard. ‘But I don’t think this is it.’

She could see his mood blacken like thunderheads rolling in. He thrust his hands out towards her again, a silent demand for her to hand over the prize or there were going to be consequences.

Haltingly, Angel did as she was bid.

Eddie took the book and turned it over in his hands, reading the title silently. He tilted his head, as if carefully processing this data before flipping open the cover and leafing through the first few pages. After a few moments he looked slowly back up, his eyes locking dangerously with hers from beneath deeply knitted brows. ‘What the fuck is this?’

Angel became fascinated with her feet again. He shook the book in the guilty air between them; his words coming out in a carefully measured rhythm with very obvious malice aforethought.

‘What ... the fuck ... is THIS?’

Angel swallowed. Eddie read the title out loud;
‘Alien Flavour: the secret of Thargoid sauce and other exotic recipes.’ 

 
‘It’s what I found,’ Angel said.

‘It’s what I found …’
Eddie mimicked, turning from pink to beetroot as he spoke.

He flung the book over his head, lunging at her suddenly with remarkable speed, crashing into her like a wrecking ball. In the limited gravity she fell slowly and landed softly, so no meaningful damage was done, but she wound up flat on her back in the cave.
Like being thrown in a slow-motion Kung Fu movie scene,
Angel thought, then instantly regretted wasting valuable reaction time on such frivolous thoughts as the weight of Eddie’s body fell on top of her. Even at half-a-g it was enough to stick her to the floor, shoulders pinned beneath his knees. Breathing hard he clutched her head in both hands and leaning forward screamed into her face with vein-busting fury.
‘WHERE IS MY BOOK, BITCH?’

Terrified now Angel bucked and twisted, trying to throw him off. As their bodies writhed and bounced about on the floor he tightened his hold on her head and got his heels tucked in around her waist, clamping her arms to her sides and squeezing his thighs together. The pressure on her chest was almost suffocating. Despite her spirited attempt to buck him off, he wasn’t going anywhere. ‘Eddie, please. I’m telling you the truth!’

He threw her head away from him in disgust, whipping her neck painfully back and slamming her skull on the rocky ground. Bright spots of dazzling light vignetted Angel’s view of the world as everything swam under the force of the blow. She blinked twice, then winced as a vicious headache kicked in, running at full throttle straight out of the gates. She became aware Eddie was searching her clothing, patting all the obvious places where someone might conceal a book before moving roughly on to the rather less feasible places. Still stunned she flopped over like a ragdoll as he flipped her to search the back. His efforts were entirely fruitless and he leapt to his feet, snarling.

Angel was just starting to haul her senses back together again when the sound of cold steel sliding across cold steel sent daggers of fear shooting into her gut. She rolled over to find the tip of Eddie’s machete pointing right at her.

‘Up.’

He waggled the machete as punctuation, then like a cat circling its prey kept the business end of the blade levelled keenly at her as she rose on shaky legs. ‘Eddie … I …’ she floundered.

Despite his reputation Angel had never actually been afraid of Eddie; not in any mortal sense. Not until now, that was. Madness didn’t so much dance in his eyes as lead a procession through the centre of town, banners flying. In them she saw the unflinching maniac commitment to his quest for revenge and how it would steamroller anything that stood in its path.

‘
That’s
the book that was inside the vault,’ Angel said, somehow managing to feel - and probably sound - guilty even though she’d done nothing wrong.

They were still circling each other, Eddie weaving the machete around in front of her eyes while Angel staggered in a woozy arc, cradling her left elbow in apparent pain.

‘Oh, come on Angel. What do you take me for? Some kind of Trumble-headed Rhumbline? I should have known you were play acting. I mean nobody can be that dumb in reality, right?’

Bump on the head or not, the insult focused Angel’s attention and she bristled testily. ‘I thought you couldn’t get here to collect it for yourself? You should have just done that in the first place and you would know I am telling you the truth.’

 ‘You want the book for yourself! Don’t think I don’t see it in your eyes!’

‘Why would I want to know how to find the Thargoids? Seriously Eddie, think rationally. I have nothing to gain by lying to you.’

‘Oh, you mean like you had nothing to gain by lying about Councillor de Laan? Or Dennet the Cheese?’

He was pacing now and Angel’s chest tightened.

‘Or how about that little episode with Crawf McVillan? How you turned one of my best smugglers into fertiliser before firing him off into outer space like a bad smell?’

They continued wheeling around each other in wary paces. Angel’s attention flicked between his quivering blade and lunatic eyes. They both told her the time for rational thinking had long-since passed for Eddie. ‘Yes … yes,’ he said, as if agreeing with her thoughts. ‘You think I’m an idiot don’t you? That I’ll swallow any old bunkum you care to serve up? But I know you didn’t kill anyone at Slough, despite your grand claims and that ridiculous media circus.’

Angel felt the icy fingers of fear tightening their grip on her. ‘How did you know?’

 ‘How? You want to know how?’

Angel was pretty sure the knowledge wouldn’t help her much but she nodded anyway.

‘I looked at the receipt! That’s how!’

Eddie barked a lunatic laugh and poked the tip of the machete at her face.

‘It was all a set-up, Angel-face; one … big … fat … con! A cunning ruse designed to fool the system into thinking you’re a bad-ass assassin so I could use you to get my book!’

‘Use me?’

‘Oh come on Angel, don’t look so shocked. There are plenty of black-hearted bastards I can get to do my evil bidding. Why would I waste my time and creds on a rank amateur like you? For every contract
you
received I sent another one out on the black market. Another price tag on the target’s head; an extremely generous bounty only to be paid if the kill was officially attributed to
you
.’

‘You framed me?’ she asked wondrously. ‘Why?’

‘To get you out here without any fuss, of course! I needed someone who looked bad enough on paper to get through this sector unmolested, but with enough highfaluting moral fortitude to get through that bat-shit crazy scientist’s stupid VR-lock!’

Angel was stunned. So all the time she was struggling to bring herself to the point of murderous intent, Eddie had been plotting to snatch the prize out from right underneath her nose?

‘So come on, Angel-face, where is it? Where is the REAL book you lifted from this vault? I just don’t believe anyone would take so much trouble to hide a cook book. So come on, out with it.’

‘I … That really was the only book. Look, I don’t know what happened three-hundred-and-fifty years ago. Maybe the secret wasn’t what you thought? S-O-U-R-C-E? S-A-U-C-E? Source, sauce? They sound the same and three-hundred-and-fifty years is a long time for the facts to get blurry.’

Her eyes focused on the machete tip still brandishing around between them in a bullish fashion. She felt along the seam of her left sleeve, surreptitiously searching for the bone handle that had been her reason for feigning an injured elbow in the first place. Her fingers closed around it just as something inside Eddie snapped.

‘MY BOOOOOOK!!’
he screeched like a banshee, drawing the hooked blade of the machete back. It was clear he intended to separate Angel’s head from her shoulders as he swung at her in a large hacking loop. With milliseconds to spare she pulled her own blade out of her sleeve and brought it to bear defensively. The two knife-edges connected between them with a ringing chime that jarred Angel’s arm all the way up to her shoulder. Eddie, who had some experience in blade to blade combat, wasn’t as stunned by the impact and quickly drew the machete back over his head to swing at her from the other direction.
CLANG!
He swung again. And again. And again and again; like an asteroid miner blasting wildly at a stubborn space rock hoping to crack it open.
CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.

With every blow she felt her arms weaken. She might have metaphorical balls of steel but he was bigger than her and had a much bigger weapon. She gritted her teeth and deflected swipe after ringing swipe. He was almost laughing as he cleaved and slashed, the book and everything else seemingly forgotten in his mindless frenzy to spill her blood.

She’d been turned completely around in the cave and could now see the hulk of the VR-rig behind Eddie’s hysterically hacking form. The machine loomed through a cloud of chalky residue, stirred up by their wild thrashings. The white dust was beginning to settle on Eddie, catching on his coat and in his hair so he looked like a crazed ghost bearing down on her through a swirling twilight mist.

CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.

Angel was forced back by the onslaught; legs shaky; arms shattered; and head still throbbing she noted with an edge of extra annoyance. Why was this happening? Why did it always happen to her? What heinous evil must she have committed in a previous life to deserve such wretched, unerring bad luck? As far as she was concerned she hadn’t put a foot wrong since arriving back in Slough with that cursed bolt of pink material. And yet here she was, plagued with disaster at every turn. Despite putting her best effort into everything she’d been asked to do she was still going to die; and with a thumping headache. Perfect. That was just nebular-fucking perfect and a fitting epitaph for her miserable fucking life.

CLANG. CLANG. CLASH!

Angel misjudged an incoming sweep and the machete glanced off her knife blade, skimming past its hilt and sheering the top painfully off her knuckles before taking a slice out of her right cheek. She squealed, dropping the knife and throwing herself backwards out of the path of his next swing. Landing in slow motion in the mouth of the cave she clutched her injured hand to her chest. The wound wasn’t deep but with no flesh to protect them two of her knuckles had been flayed down to bone and it hurt like hell. As blood started to spill from the wounds in dusty scarlet rivulets it made her queasy. Unable to kill and faint at the sight of blood; she really was turning out to be a total failure as an assassin.