[01] Elite: Wanted (21 page)

Do they think I sold them out?
she wondered.

What she couldn’t work out was why someone had let the Syndicate into the ship in the first place, but not told them where the cargo was. And why had they taken Harnack’s body?

‘How’s she doing?’ Ravindra asked, reaching up to stroke the cutter’s scarred hull. Then she stopped and pulled her hand back. Ji’s words flooded her mind –
all you’re thinking about is the ship, the crew and the next score
. Was that true?

‘It’s mostly ablative scoring. It’s weakened the integrity of the armour. How long have we got?’ Jonty asked.

‘Not long,’ Ravindra replied, unwilling to be precise. ‘We could be facing off against an Anaconda with a fighter complement and a corvette. She needs to be as close to peak as possible.’

‘Shame Jenny’s not here,’ Orla said from where she was perched on one of the ship’s stubby nacelles. Ravindra looked up at the older woman, trying to read her expression. Orla held Ravindra’s look but remained poker-faced. Ravindra turned and headed into the ship. She went into the cabin that few of them ever went into. Even after Marvin had been killed, Ravindra had chosen to keep her old berth on the ship and not move into the captain’s cabin. he was pretty sure that Orla snuck in there sometimes.

Like the rest of the ship, the cabin had been well appointed. The Empire did not stint on luxuries. And like the rest of the ship’s non-essential systems and areas it looked somewhat worn around the edges. There was little in the way of personal items in the cabin. None of them liked leaving evidence around on a working ship. Ravindra, however, still thought she could smell him in the cabin. A not entirely unpleasant mix of his deodorant, and sweat and oil from the various ship systems that he would work on with Jenny.

They had all wanted to pursue the shoot-in-the-back bounty hunter who had killed him. But none of them actually had done anything. Dane’s Law had revenge down as one of the stupid things that got you caught or killed.

Now she was going to have to enact one of the less pleasant of Dane’s Laws. She found the wooden case in the storage space under the bunk. She spun the ancient combination lock until it clicked open. It was empty. She stared at the worn, contoured, velvet interior where the item she was looking for was supposed to be. She opened a comms link to Jonty and Orla.

‘Guys, could you meet me in the common room? Now?’

The common room was a communal rest area and mess. Again, like the rest of the non-essential areas of the ship, it had once been luxurious and was now a little tatty around the edges. The crew had eclectically and haphazardly decorated it. Mainly Jonty and Jenny, though the state of the art audio/holo system had been installed by Marvin and Harnack. Ravindra was leaning on the wooden table with the chessboard design on it. Marvin had insisted that they all learned the game in the Warren. He saw it as a firm grounding in the basics of strategy.

‘What’s that for?’ Jonty asked pointing at the wooden case. He knew exactly what was supposed to be in the box. Ravindra ignored his question. When Orla walked in she glanced at the case and then back at Ravindra.

‘Where is it?’ Ravindra asked her first mate.

‘With me,’ Orla told her.

‘What? Why?’ Jonty demanded.

‘Because one of you sold us out to the Judas Syndicate,’ Orla said softly.

‘And we know it wasn’t you because …’ Jonty demanded.

‘You don’t, I do,’ Orla told him evenly. ‘That’s good enough for me. I can see why it wouldn’t be enough for the two of you.’

Ravindra was watching her. Looking for a tell but keeping her own hands well away from the burst pistols at her side. She opened her mouth to say something, but Orla put a finger to her own lips. Ravindra groaned almost silently as Orla slid her fingers into a handheld, multi-spectrum scanner glove. Orla ran the scanner over Ravindra. The glove froze in place over Ravindra’s hair. Orla reached for the bug – Ravindra guessed it was probably a tiny spybot – but stopped when the pilot held up a hand. Ravindra tapped her comp ring and a small hologram keyboard was projected into the air. Ravindra typed a brief text message and sent it to Orla who took a moment to read the message in her lenses. Then Orla nodded and held up her hand before tapping her own ring and making its keyboard appear.

‘Okay, I’ve spoofed it,’ Orla finally said. ‘It’s playing random footage put together by an ongoing intelligent editing program. It’ll beat casual observation but not a great deal of scrutiny. Sure you don’t want to simply get rid of it?’

‘Not just yet,’ Ravindra said.

‘You were bugged?’ Jonty asked. ‘By who? The Syndicate?’

‘More likely the bounty hunter she’s just had a drink with,’ Orla muttered. ‘Rookie error, Rav.’

The goldskin turned to look at Ravindra, eyebrow raised.

‘Where were we?’ Ravindra resumed.

‘We were trying to work out who sold us out.’

‘It could have been Jenny. A faked kidnapping makes good cover for an out,’ Ravindra said. ‘Could even have been Harnack.’

‘It wasn’t Harnack!’ Jonty spat. ‘He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t betray us,’ he continued more calmly.

‘No, and if it was Jenny, then why didn’t she tell them where the cargo was? And why take Harnack’s body? So that leaves you two, as I know I didn’t do it,’ said Orla.

‘You’ll excuse us if we don’t remove you from the list immediately,’ Jonty said.

‘Sure,’ Orla said, smiling wanly.

‘So how do you want to do this?’ Jonty asked. ‘You going to kill both of us if you can’t decide? That’d be convenient if
you
were the traitor.’

Ravindra was looking between the two of them.

‘See, here’s the thing,’ Ravindra began. ‘I don’t think the person who did it thought it was a complete betrayal, otherwise why not just tell them where the cargo was and collect their thirty pieces of silver?’

‘They were playing their own game,’ Orla agreed.

Both the women turned to look at Jonty. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut. No tears leaked out, but his eyes were watery when he opened them.

‘Lady Fates, you’re going to kill me, aren’t you?’ He glanced down, unable to look either of them in the eye. Orla opened her mouth to answer.

‘I don’t think so. I think I see what happened here, but we need to
know
,’ Ravindra said gently. Orla glared at her captain. Ravindra just shook her head.

‘Look, I’m sorry.’ Jonty said defensively. ‘But it’s the only chance that Harnack has.’

‘Harnack’s dead,’ Orla said harshly. Ravindra felt her heart sink.

‘Yes, but the Syndicate are backed by the Imperials, they have senatorial approval,’ the goldskin said.

‘So?’ Orla demanded.

‘The Empire has clone facilities,’ Ravindra said sadly.

‘You fool,’ Orla groaned.

‘There’s been rumours that the Veils are all clones of this one guy, some thousand-year-old super-gangster. Look, I know it was bad, but that’s why I didn’t give them the cargo. They return Harnack and Jenny to us – both alive – and we give them the cargo.’

‘But why did they take Jenny?’ Orla screamed at him. He cringed away from the woman’s anger.

‘I didn’t know they would do that. The deal was they just took Harnack and we’d swap him for the cargo when they …’

‘What?’ Orla demanded. ‘Brought him back?’

‘Look, there’s something that you don’t know about Harnack and I,’ Jonty told them. ‘We were seeing each other.’

‘Really?’ Orla and Ravindra both asked, simultaneously and sarcastically.

‘Oh.’

‘But why did they take Jenny?’ Orla asked.

‘Added insurance, they told me. Look, I was furious with them. But we can still pull this off.’

‘They took Jenny because they knew that when adults found out about this fairy tale they’d see the holes in your fantasy,’ Orla told him.

‘Wh-what are you talking about? The empire has entire armies of clones! They can manipulate genetic material. I mean, look at Ravindra.
She’s
been genetically engineered
.’ Both women could hear the desperation in Jonty’s voice. He had spent a long time convincing himself of this fantasy.

‘It takes months to grow a clone to majority,’ Ravindra told him sadly. ‘Even then it’s a blank slate. It wouldn’t have Harnack’s memories, his experience, his personality. It wouldn’t be him, it would just look like him.’

Ravindra was surprised to see Jonty start to smile.

‘I thought you might say that. Despite what you may think, I’m not a moron. They can use EM resonance with digital pulses of infrared and infrasound to map his mind and model it to regrow his mind as it was.’

‘That technology’s years away from practical application,’ Orla said. ‘And it’s designed for storing minds electronically.’

‘There’s no way to take that raw data and imprint it onto a cloned brain. The problem’s not the information itself, it’s recreating the billions of neural connections that our mind makes as a matter of course,’ Ravindra finished. If you grew up on New America then it was difficult not to have at least a passing interest in biotechnology. In Ravindra’s case it was a matter of self-preservation, just in case the genetic tampering she had been subject to as a slave foetus ever went wrong.

‘So why did they take Harnack?’ Jonty asked. The desperation in his voice was back.

‘Window dressing,’ Orla said quietly. The anger had gone from her voice. ‘To keep their inside man in line. But they knew we’d never fall for it – that’s why they took Jenny; that’s what the deal is now. Jenny for the cargo.’

‘But you don’t know,’ Jonty whined. ‘There could have been developments that you don’t know about … secret labs …’

‘That they’re going to use to bring a pirate back to life?’ Ravindra asked gently.

‘Harnack’s body probably got spaced the moment they left atmosphere,’ Orla told him. It was enough. He started to weep. ‘You want to cry, Jonty? Cry for Jenny. Fates know what she’s going through right now.’

‘I thought …’ he mumbled.

‘You want to make a play, then you speak to all of us,’ Ravindra said. ‘You know the rules on this ship.’

‘You didn’t speak to us because you knew we’d never buy in to your fantasy. You sold us out, you sold out Jenny, because you wanted to keep your hope alive a little bit more. That’s pathetic.’ Orla drew the Executioner from where it had been stuck through her waistband at the small of her back, concealed by her T-shirt. It was an ancient semi-automatic pistol. So old the rounds it fired still had shell casings. Marvin had been forced to machine the bullets himself. It was stainless steel with walnut grips and its name was inscribed on the slide. Marvin had claimed that the pistol had been in his family for centuries and had belonged to a gun-fighting ancestor from Earth. The gun served only one purpose on the
Song of Stone
.

‘But you said …’ Jonty tailed off. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Want me to …?’ Ravindra offered.

‘I’ve got this,’ Orla said quietly. She pointed the ancient pistol at Jonty.

‘Please …’ he began again.

‘You doing this here?’ Ravindra asked, looking around the common room.

‘Yes,’ Orla said. Ravindra noticed that the gun was shaking slightly. Orla swallowed hard. Jonty was pleading with her now her now. ‘Shut up!’ Orla shouted at him. ‘You know what the really sad thing is? If Harnack was here, he’d pull the trigger himself.’

Ravindra had a moment to appreciate the man’s golden skin, one last time. He had always been as beautiful as he was exotic. He looked alien, or how she imagined a
deva
would look.

The report of the pistol in the enclosed common room was deafening. Jonty’s body collapsed to the floor. The pistol wavered, dropping a little. There were tears in Orla’s eyes. Then she stepped forwards and double-tapped Jonty, shooting him two more times in the head. Just like Harnack had taught them.

‘You knew the law,’ she said to the corpse through her tears.

Dane’s Law: you killed traitors, no excuses, no mercy.

Ravindra took the Executioner from Orla’s hand. She ejected the magazine and worked the slide, ejecting the round in the chamber. She put the ancient weapon down and then held her sobbing friend.

They were going to miss Jonty badly. They would have needed his skill as a gunner if they were going up against the Syndicate, particularly with Harnack dead and Jenny gone. His value as a gunner was, however, outweighed by the risk of having a traitor on board.

Orla was sat on the sofa in the common room. She had a bottle of whisky dangling from one hand. She had promised Ravindra that she would take a Purge when she needed to. Jonty’s body was gone. Ravindra had taken it down to the cold storage. They would eject it unceremoniously into space when they had the chance. The only trace of his passing was a red smear on the floor. Ravindra had also returned the Executioner to Marvin’s old cabin.

Ravindra was leaning against the wall of the common room.

‘When are you going to set the rendezvous?’ Orla asked, her voice slurring slightly. Ravindra knew that she was probably going to have to go through this again with her later.

‘Two days from now,’ Ravindra said.

Orla’s head swivelled around unsteadily to look at Ravindra. ‘That leaves Jenny to the tender mercies of the Syndicate for a long time. The ship’s not too badly banged up. We can be ready before then.’

‘If they’re going to hurt her, then they’ll hurt her, regardless of how long we …’

‘Don’t be a cold bitch, Rav, not with me. I can see straight through you. If she’s being hurt, then I want it to stop as soon as possible.’

‘I genuinely don’t think they’ll do that. They’d gain nothing by it. The double-cross will come after they’ve got what they want. Then they’re going to try to kill us.’

‘So why the delay?’ Orla asked.

‘I think we’re dead,’ Ravindra said. She gave this a moment to settle in. Orla was looking more sober now. ‘You, me and Jenny. I think that if we dumped the cargo, dumped the ship, ran now, found the shittiest stage one colony, on the most backward planet, in the most Podunk system, then maybe the Syndicate wouldn’t find us. For a while.’

Orla took a long pull on the whisky bottle.