[01] Elite: Wanted (2 page)

She walked into the kitchen, where the processor already had her concentrated-coffee-from-concentrate-beverage ready for her. It tasted foul but it was manufacturer-guaranteed to help her wake up. Ji was sitting at the breakfast bar, backlit by Motherlode through the kitchen porthole. His jaw was set, a look of defiance on his face. Ravindra pretended to ignore him as she searched the news feed playing on her contact lenses for anything of interest.

‘Stay away from the
Magician
,’ she said without looking at him. Trying to make it sound unimportant. Knowing that it wouldn’t work.

‘Okay,’ Ji said. This surprised her so much that she looked over at him. ‘Take me out with you. I know Newman’s back.’

Her heart sank. It worried her that he even knew they were working together. She wondered who else knew who shouldn’t.

‘Don’t be ridiculous …’ she started.

‘
You
were working when you were sixteen—’ he began.

Her anger was like a flash-fire. She prided herself on rationality but it often went out the window in the face of her only child.

‘And I was in prison at eighteen! I didn’t have any choice!’ she shouted at him. ‘You’re not coming out with me. Worrying about you could get me and the rest of the crew killed!’

‘Captain Merkel—’ Ji started.

‘Merkel is a glory boy idiot who’s going to be dead soon! He’s an amateur, a wannabe! He doesn’t have the slightest idea of what he’s doing!’

‘If you won’t—’

She was across the small kitchen and had grabbed him out of the chair and slammed him against the external bulkhead next to the porthole before she even knew she was doing it. ‘Stay away from Merkel!’ she screamed at him. He tried to push her away but she’d locked him down tight.

‘Let go of me! It’s good enough for you … Why isn’t it good enough for me?’ He was struggling, trying to escape her armbar.

‘Because I want something better for you!’

‘As a station rat?’ He stopped struggling as the anger drained from his face. Ravindra found herself looking at the face of a cold and distant stranger. ‘We had a chance at another life. We could have been far away from here a long time ago. Why didn’t you sell the
Song
when you took her?’

Because she’s my ship
, Ravindra thought. She let go of him. He pushed past her.

‘You can’t stop me doing what I want to do!’ he screamed at her on his way out of the kitchen.

Good parenting
, she told herself angrily, as she heard the door to the two-bedroom cabin slide shut. She was never going to be able to get across just how frightened she was for him – and all the time.

‘Merkel.’ It was rude enough to walk uninvited into the berth of another ship. It was even ruder to not address another captain or pilot by his title. But if Merkel was offended he didn’t let it show.

Merkel was a handsome man, a little younger than her. His short, spiky blonde hair was styled by the only saloon on the station. His deep blue eyes and his smile, full of white ivory, were very disarming and had gone a long way to make him extremely popular among certain men and women. He was wearing the closest thing to up-to-date fashion that the Frontier could offer. Probably the results of his last sloppy score, Ravindra thought.

‘Captain Khanguire,’ Merkel said, smiling, his hands open in welcome as he came out from under the shadow of the
Magician
, a heavily modified Cobra Mk. III.

The rest of Merkel’s crew seemed a little more suspicious of Ravindra’s presence in their docking berth. Ravindra didn’t break step as she punched Merkel in the stomach with her right fist; as he started to double over, she brought her left fist up into his chin and then followed that up with her elbow in one swift action. He staggered back. She drew the burst pistol on her left hip and hit him in the face with it twice. His nose broke and blood squirted onto his face. He went sprawling over a packing crate.

The two men on Merkel’s crew started towards the pair of them while the the third, a woman, reached for a shotgun. Ravindra drew her right hand burst pistol and pointed it in their direction. A crosshair appeared on her lenses showing where the bullets would hit if she started firing.

‘You might get me in a rush, but he’ll die.’ She put the barrel of the left hand burst pistol against Merkel’s lips. ‘And I reckon I kill two of you before you get me.’ The
Magician
’s crew stopped moving. She pushed the burst pistol hard, chipping several of Merkel’s teeth, until she had forced half the barrel into his mouth. ‘Convince me that you’re going to have nothing more to do with my son.’

When Ravindra quit the
Magician
’s docking berth she was breathing hard. It hadn’t been the imminence of gunplay that bothered her – she was furious with Merkel. She had wanted to hurt him, maybe even kill him. She was walking the curving corridor that ran around the station connecting the docking berths when she saw four figures approaching her.

This is just what I need
, Ravindra thought. She recognised the lead figure, a nondescript man with a goatee, and salt and pepper hair. His name was McCauley and he captained the
Scalpel
. They were a professional crew who took down big, dangerous scores, and were the only crew reputed to be colder and more ruthless than the
Song of
Stone
’s. Ravindra had always had the feeling that McCauley disliked her, though she had never been able to work out why.

McCauley’s glare as he went by made Ravindra’s hands move instinctively closer to her pistols. When the four man crew of the
Scalpel
had passed she glanced back at them. McCauley was looking over his shoulder at her, still glaring.

Ravindra was sitting in a ‘coffee’ bar stripping down and cleaning blood and saliva off one of her burst pistols when Newman found her. He had the compact, powerful but not massive frame that she had come to expect from ex-military types. His hair was cut short, close to the scalp, and he was attractive in an average sort of way. Ravindra wasn’t quite sure how old he was, though she suspected he was close to her age. He was dressed conservatively but his dark coloured, utilitarian, multi-pocket trousers, his jacket and his boots all screamed ex-military. She couldn’t make out where he was concealing weaponry, but she was sure he was. So far he’d been courteous and very professional and he would be doing the most difficult part of the job. All of this appealed to Ravindra. But something about Newman’s strangely colourless eyes felt wrong.

Ravindra didn’t know a great deal about his background. There were stories that he was either ex-Federation special forces, or one of the Emperor’s own elite, genetically enhanced, clone soldiers. Now, however, he worked for very different masters.

Newman glanced down at the burst pistol, his expression devoid of emotion.

‘Everything okay, Captain Khanguire?’ he enquired.

‘Fine,’ she told him, looking up as she rapidly reassembled the burst pistol. ‘Now?’

He nodded.

‘I’d prefer more time.’

‘We’ve done enough sims. It’ll be fine, though I respect your commitment to preparation.’

She held up her right fist. Her personal computer took the form of a simple steel band around her middle finger. She bumped fists with Newman, touching his own ring computer. The final details of the plan were transferred to her securely. She saw the file appear in her lenses as a blinking icon in the lower right side of her vision.

‘You’re clear on the plan?’ Newman asked.

‘Yes,’ Ravindra said. Part of her was irritated and part was gratified at the question.

‘And your crew?’

She nodded. Newman turned to leave.

‘Captain Newman?’

He stopped and looked back.

‘I am aware of your background. I want this nice and smooth. No unnecessary grief.’ Ravindra spoke calmly.

Newman smiled. The smile didn’t quite make it to his eyes.

‘Don’t worry, Captain, we’ve done this before.’ Then he left. Ravindra noticed another man and a woman, similarly dressed, fall in behind him.

Ravindra walked into the docking berth. The sleek form of the
Song of Stone
still took her breath away. The smooth, rounded lines added to her stealth signature. The nacelles gave her an edge in both speed and manoeuvrability. The
Song
had started life as a Cutter in the service of the Empire. It had been one of the ships that had come to claim the Reddot system. At the time Ravindra had been piloting an old Cobra Mk. II. The cutter was the faster, more manoeuvrable ship and had carried a lot more firepower but Ravindra had out-flown the Empire’s pilot. Of course she had – the
Song
’s original pilot hadn’t been genetically modified to be the best slave pilot the genetechs in Simpson Town could create by manipulating an unborn foetus. The other benefit of using an Imperial Cutter was that anything they did tended to be blamed on Imperial privateers.

They had renamed the ship the
Song of Stone
. It was named for the think-tank that she had joined in the Warren Prison Complex. The think-tank had consisted of her current crew and had been run by Marvin Dane. Marvin had been captain of the
Song
before Ravindra, taking it over after the battle. He had been killed on a station in the Tiolce system by a bounty hunter. Ravindra still missed him.

The think-tank had been put together for two reasons only. They wanted to use their skill sets to become rich; and they were never, ever, going back to Ross 128. That was why, even though the bounty hunter had had the drop on Marvin, he hadn’t surrendered.

Ravindra walked up the ramp and into the ship. Like anything Imperial the inside was comfortable, bordering on the plush, though it looked a little worn now. She walked down the corridor towards the bridge. The data from the ship’s last diagnostic ran down her vision in a cascade. Everything was running well within parameters but she wanted to see more systems, particularly manoeuvring and weapons, running at optimum. She had decided a long time ago that this was what made the difference between this ship and her crew, and wannabe, disasters-waiting-to-happen like Merkel.

She walked onto the bridge. The other four were waiting for her.

‘Harnack?’ she asked instead of saying good morning. Harnack was one half of the weapons team. He was responsible for the military laser. He was a small wiry man with a goatee. Ravindra knew that he seemed very serious unless you knew him well. He had served with the Gurkhas, a well-respected ground-force regiment within the Federation, a regiment with a very long history.

‘I’ve simmed it. The cyclic rate seems good and it’s holding power fine according to the diagnostics …’

‘But?’

‘I’d like to test it.’

‘I suspect that Harlan would be less than pleased if we blew a hole in the side of his station,’ Jenny said. Jennifer Storrow, on first glance, had looked an even more obvious victim than Ravindra in the Warren Prison Mine. But unlike Ravindra, the small thin woman – with short hair that changed colour every time they docked – had avoided bad things happening to her by being fast, quick-witted, funny and
very
useful. ‘Besides,
I
did the upgrades. When has something that I’ve done not worked?’ She was the
Song
’s engineer. As far as Ravindra could tell, Jenny had grown up on various tramp freighters throughout the Frontier. If she had a family she never spoke of it, though she seemed to know someone on every station they had ever visited.

‘Your long string of unhappy relationships?’ Jonty Davis suggested. He was the other half of the weapons crew and Harnack’s lover. That the pair thought the rest of the crew didn’t know about this was a little naïve, in Ravindra’s opinion. She knew she was going to have to do something about it, as relationships between the crewmembers broke Dane’s Law. On the other hand, she had been telling herself that she had to do something about it for eighteen months, ever since Marvin had died.

Jonty was tall and slender, which wasn’t ideal for some of the gees they pulled in manoeuvres, but he survived. His hair was long and silver in colour, and even Ravindra had to admit that he was very, very pretty. His beauty was enhanced by the fact that he was a goldskin. He had grown up in Federation space on Matto, a planet in the Bedaho system where an indigenous symbiotic creature turned all the inhabitants’ skins gold.

Jenny threw an obscene hand gesture Jonty’s way. Jonty blew her a kiss in return.

‘Okay, pack it in,’ Orla told them. Orla was the oldest member of the crew. She had known Dane before they had both been sent to Ross 128. Ravindra was pretty sure that they had been lovers even after they had gotten out of the Warren, whatever Dane’s Law had said. She was a solidly built woman of frontier-asteroid mining stock. Her long, brown hair was always tied back in a ponytail. Orla handled comms, navigation, electronic security and sensors. Ravindra was still not sure why Orla wasn’t captain of the
Song
. Ravindra suspected it was because she cared too much. Orla had been the maternal figure in the Warren. She and Dane had protected and cared for the others when the predators had come. Ravindra, by contrast, was utterly ruthless. Orla was effectively first mate, as she’d been when Dane had been in charge. Since Pilot Ravindra had been voted in as captain, Orla had backed her every step of the way.

Ravindra sat in the high-backed chair and spun it to face the others, who were already sat and strapped at their stations. She touched the arm of the acceleration couch, transferring the data Newman had given her to the ship’s systems. The others received the file almost instantly.

‘Final details – we’ve run the sims, we know the score. I know we’re flying by the seat of our pants more than we’d normally like but we’ve been out before. Any problems, I want to hear them now.’

‘These people?’ Orla asked.

‘Newman seems to know what he’s doing but yes, we’re in bed with scum and we don’t want to screw things up. We will not be making a habit of this, even if we did decide it was worth it for this score,’ Ravindra replied.

‘Just out of interest, could we get out of this if we wanted to?’ Jonty asked.