[04] Elite: Mostly Harmless (7 page)

Lights flashed and the drone’s helicopter blades whirred earnestly.

‘Your analysis is flawed,’ it said eventually, ‘and your language is appalling.’

‘Commander Rose, you are cleared for orbit,’ Rachel’s voice crackled through the comms panel, breaking the tension.

Angel pulled her harness tight and flicked a switch to hand the controls over to the station’s berthing computer, which lifted her ship deftly up off the landing pad before spitting it out into orbit. Immediately they left the slowly rotating maw of the spaceport, zero-g kicked in and everything felt a bit lighter. Now redundant the rotary blades above the bot stopped whirring and retracted back inside its body as it switch to magnetic pulse control.
It was a relief to get rid of the buzzing noise
, thought Angel.

She looked out at the ships flying this way and that around the station as her moderately armed Eagle escort slipped in behind her. It reminded her again what a foolish errand she was about to run; strange how DORIS didn’t have anything helpful to say about that.

She checked the sector-view map on the side display panel then tapped some co-ordinates into the keyboard. Her vision blurred with the reverberation of the cockpit as the engines roared and the Cobra shifted lanes, accelerating through the traffic to get ready for the jump. The soothing robotic voice of SysCon kicked in as they approached the slipstream to jump-orbit.

‘Good morning Commander Rose, please state your destination.’

‘LHS 3439.’

There was a slight pause before her navigation panel lit up with her clearance code.

‘Thank you Commander, you are cleared to jump. Travel safely.’

‘Are you on my back, Tailspin?’

The comms panel crackled again and it was Kram, sounding wounded.

‘I am ready to piggyback the jump yes, and I wish you wouldn’t call me that.’

‘Yeah, well you know what wishes got?’

‘What?’

Angel flicked the comms link off, leaving him to wonder while she finished preparations for their first jump. She just hoped they would make it unmolested through the next fifteen light years as they had to refuel in a pretty hot sector. She didn’t like making herself such a juicy target for any stray bandit with a taste for gold.

‘And you’d better buckle up too, DORIS, because antique interface or not this puppy’s about to jump into hyperspace and your moral compass won’t look quite so clever bent around the air vents.’

Angel smirked at the effect this had on the robot, which hummed darkly as it activated its magnetic safety strip and was summarily stuck to the cabin door. Angel turned back to the front HUD.

‘Let’s get this space-train moving then,’ she said to herself as she leaned forward and tapped an incredibly worn out ‘H’ key.

Chapter 7

Angel nudged the nose of the Cobra into perfect alignment with the jump corridor etching itself out in a thin matrix across the HUD. As the ship locked on to the trajectory she sank back into her command chair, the g-force of rapid acceleration pressing against her whole body like a hungry lover. They’d done this many times before, her ship and her, but she still felt the thrill of it when the hyperspace drive kicked in. The engines throbbed, vibrating the air around her and making her teeth rattle as the ship screamed towards a crack of impossible brightness that was blossoming on the black canvass of the non-horizon; a rip in space and time that she could slip into for a shortcut through reality. Hyperspace; she didn’t really get the science behind it so remained in awe of the magic even after thousands of jumps. In an instant the space in front of her roared with incandescent energy and they were sucked between dimensions. For a heartbeat it was like all reality went white - perfectly, completely and quite unremarkably white. Even sound turned white in that instant, then almost before it began it was all over again, hyperspace spitting her out light years from where she had started; regurgitated back into normal space like a cosmic furball.

Time’s up … energy spent. Time to fuel up before jumping again …

‘Hop, hop, hop, like a space bunny trying not run into a fox.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

DORIS whirred, detaching itself from the wall and hovering over to look at the HUD readouts.

‘Are you still here?’

Angel looked to her right to see Kram’s ship spat out just behind her. Good. He was managing to get that right at least. She sat there, cold; ship’s systems on minimum, shields down, waiting for the sector to be drawn up on the holo-dash in front of her. She gazed at the red dwarf they were here to visit; to scoop up a bit of fuel before making the last two jumps to payday. The fading sun glowed a pinkish red through her windscreen, crystallising ice creeping in from the corners framing it in twinkly light.
So beautiful; like candlelight at a romantic table
, she mused, and then mentally thumped herself several times in the face for having such a ridiculously sentimental thought.

‘Okay, set a course for a quick scoop and let’s get on our way. This area is reading very hot for piracy, so let’s run as cool as we can; try and stay out of sight. Okay?’

‘Sure captain,’ the voice over the comms link was snarky. ‘If you can’t stand the heat, stay cold like a turkey. I gotcha.’

Angel frowned.

‘What does that even mean, you freak?’

DORIS started making ticking noises as its processors ramped up.

‘I believe your escort has confused his idioms,’ it said in a voice so full of scorn it seemed hard to believe it wasn’t human. ‘Let’s hope he’s a better pilot than an intellectual because my sensors detect long range scanners from sector G15 are probing us.’

‘What?’

Angel grabbed the keyboard out of its slot and started hitting keys, bringing up the scan logs.

‘Oh, piss and gravity.’

DORIS was right. There was a ship in range; something big and bad looking.

‘We’ve been spotted, Kram. Sector G15. Someone’s definitely showing an interest. I’m going to put up my shields and hope they didn’t spot the gold yet, but get ready for company.’

‘Right you are.’

She looked out of the side window at Kram. He grinned like a moron and gave her the double thumbs up.

‘Just keep your hands on your flight stick Tailspin, and don’t let anybody get on my arse.’

Her own scanners now hard at work to assess the danger, she saw the wedge-shape of a Fer-de-Lance sketched out on the dash in front of her. This ship was built with one purpose in mind; destruction. It was bristling with armaments; hard points loaded up with shield crushing cannons and missiles; hull ripping multi-cannons and lasers mounted on gimbals anywhere else there was room. She swallowed hard. They didn’t have the fuel to jump out of there and the Fer-de-Lance was coming in fast, like a wolf on the scent of its prey.

‘Shit,’ she looked at DORIS hovering over by the nav-panel. ‘Round about now would be an excellent time for you to come up with something brilliant.’

Its processor chucked and whirred.

‘You can’t outrun them. Your shields will probably last two hits. My advice is to surrender.’

Angel stared at DORIS.

‘That’s it? With all your billions of scenarios analysed and assessed? I could have come up with that myself. In fact, it was just what I was thinking.’

‘Sometimes the simple answer is the right answer, so even an idiot can be right occasionally.’

‘You’re a useless heap of silicon chips is what you are,’ Angel said, burned by the inference.

DORIS hummed indignantly but didn’t add anything else.

Angel looked at the sector map, celestial objects mapped out in wireframe hologram. There was a small asteroid belt a little way off to port. It might offer them some shelter, a chance to dodge the larger ship like cat and mouse in amongst the flying space rock until help could arrive. It was worth a try anyway, and they could still surrender after the first shot was fired; if a first shot ever got fired. She punched the keyboard to open a comms channel to Kram.

‘I’m going to make a run for it to that rock garden in G10. With a bit of luck they spent so much on that arsenal they overlooked decent thrusters. If they give chase just keep them off my back. We’re not looking to engage Kram - we’re just sticking our toe in the cosmic pool of ‘can we get the fuck out of here?’ Okay?’

‘Sure thing.’

Kram sounded far too happy for Angel’s liking, considering what was headed their way.

‘And don’t get killed,’ she added before snapping the comms link off and stepping on the thrusters, pulling the flight stick over hard to port to bank the ship in the direction of the asteroids.

The engines burned fuel, rattling the cockpit and causing her peripheral vision to shudder as she pushed
Hope Falls
to her limit for normal space. She glanced at the course readout for the Fer-de-Lance. Perhaps it was innocently on its way somewhere else and just happened to look like it was making a beeline for them? This optimistic little fantasy was rapidly quashed as the ‘Lance changed course to intercept, accelerating hard through the distant space as its crew figured out where they were heading. By the clip they were travelling at it looked like they hadn’t skimped on thruster upgrades either.

Damn. Time to panic,
thought Angel.

‘They’re closing in.’

‘Okay, taking up a defensive position. Just keep your foot to the floor. I’ll try and slow them down.’

‘Kram! DON’T get killed, you got me? If they even get one solid hit on you I want you to surrender, because I sure as hell will be.’

Kram’s ship fell out of sight as he dropped behind and to starboard, putting himself protectively between the Cobra and the approaching interloper. Her ship’s telemetry sketched out a hologram of the Eagle. It looked tiny beside the ‘Lance and although she had to grudgingly admire Kram’s bravery it didn’t exactly make her feel safe. She tweaked a couple of settings and channelled a bit more power to the thrusters, pressing her foot down hard enough to make her thigh muscles quiver.

She watched the green dots at the centre of her display pulse softly as the orange dot heading in from G15 got closer and closer with every sweep of the radar arm. She glanced at the sector map just above it. They weren’t going to make the asteroid belt before the ‘Lance cut them off.

‘Piss and gravity!’

Her chest tight, ears pulsing with adrenaline-fuelled blood, the seconds stretched out into interminable minutes as the radar sketched out the approaching doom.
That’s the trouble with space,
thought Angel. It was so damn big everything took forever to arrive, then suddenly it was there and all over in the blink of an eye. It really jangled the nerves.

A couple more radar sweeps and the ‘Lance registered close enough for Angel to scan its combat computer. Pretty much every one of those bad old guns was powering up and pointing at her. Her HUD began to flash numbers that made her stomach flip over as the hologram of the Fer-de-Lance lit up along its fuselage with the various guns coming online. Angel watched with grim despair as two tiny dots detached from the ship’s missile launchers, rushing towards her and Kram.

‘Shit! Incoming!’

She took evasive action, yawing to port to put a little distance between her and the Eagle and priming the heat sink vents. Kram nosed up in front of her protectively and fired off his own pair of missiles towards the incoming dots. The radar showed the distance between the two sets of projectiles closing rapidly. Five clicks; four clicks; three, two, one … a puff of orange blossomed in the distance as opposing missiles met and detonated. All gone, but the attacking vessel was already launching a fresh salvo. Four missiles - from the look of it these were heat seekers. She checked her vents were still primed and ready to dump hot waste if the missiles got past Kram.

‘Keep on a course for the rocks. I’m going to draw them away from you.’

‘Shit! Tailspin, don’t be an arse. You don’t have the shields for close combat with that tank!’

Ignoring her, Kram broke away from the Cobra in a high looping arch, swinging the Eagle to starboard at its apex and peeling away as he vented a flood of hot plasma to grab the attention of the heat seekers. It worked; as he banked sharply all four of the missiles adjusted course to match his, locking on to his howling thrusters. Angel checked the readout on her dash.

‘Shit! SHIT!’

The missiles might have been tempted by Kram’s plasma fart, but the Fer-de-Lance was still closing on her fast. An orange beam arced experimentally through the blackness, but the ‘Lance was still too far away for short range weapons to be effective so it was obviously just meant to intimidate.
It worked,
thought Angel as her mind scrambled for ideas in the void of her rising panic. She was definitely very intimidated. She flicked the comms link over to an open broadcast channel.

‘Mayday, mayday. All combat capable ships, this is Alliance trade vessel
Hope Falls
. Urgently requesting backup in sector G12. We’re under attack! Any combat capable ships in range please respond!’

She glanced around her, trying to spot Kram. He was off to starboard a few clicks, dancing and twisting the Eagle in a mad ballet as he tried to stay one step ahead of another barrage of missiles. As she watched he managed to detonate two harmlessly in a slew of heat sink exhaust, but another two went slamming into his hull and tail, tossing the small ship about like a stuffed toy in the hands of an exuberant toddler.

Angel tapped her keyboard to see how much damage he’d taken but the chatter of machine gun fire yanked her attention back to her own predicament. A spray of tracer fire raked across the windscreen and then pinged a rapid assault along the top of her cockpit. The ‘Lance had come up hard and fast, choking her escape route to the asteroid belt with ease.

She banked hard to port. The engines roared gleefully as she opened up the thrusters, the hull groaning under the stress of the tight turn as pipes and panels throughout the ship’s interior popped and fizzed. Her ears roared as fiercely as the engines as adrenaline pumped, her body pressed back into the command chair with the g-force of the manoeuvre.