[01] Elite: Wanted (23 page)

‘Now, here’s what’s going to hap—’ Merkel started. Ravindra shot him in the centre of his forehead. Merkel stood still for a moment and then collapsed to the ground, almost dragging Ji to the floor with him.

‘Mum!’ Ji cried.

‘Get away from him. Now!’ Ravindra shouted. She switched the carbine back to full automatic and advanced quickly on Merkel as Ji tried to disentangle himself from the Cobra captain. Ravindra kicked the body onto its back, fired two bursts into Merkel’s chest and a third into his head.

She glanced at Ji. There were tears rolling down his face. He looked beaten and bloody but he was on his feet.

‘Mum, th—’ he came forwards to hug her. Ravindra pushed him away.

‘Is there anyone else on the ship?’ she demanded.

‘N-n-no. There was just Alice and Merkel, everyone else was outside,’ Ji managed.

‘Okay. You’re going to hold onto my shoulder and we are going to back, quickly, towards the airlock, do you understand me?’

‘Mum—’

‘Do you understand me, Ji?’ she demanded.

‘Y-yes,’ the terrified boy answered. He took hold of her shoulder and they backed up. Ravindra was still looking all around, the carbine at the ready. She heard Ji start to sob when he saw Alice’s body.

‘Two down in the cargo bay; I’ve got Ji,’ Ravindra said over the comms link.

‘Clear,’ Harrelson replied.

‘Clear,’ Orla replied.

‘Clear,’ Harlan replied.

‘Jonas?’ Ravindra asked after a pause.

‘Hell yeah, I’m clear,’ Jonas answered.

‘Two to come out,’ Ravindra told them. ‘Ji, open the airlock.’ Ji did as he was told.

Orla was waiting for them at the bottom of the ramp, covering them as they backed out of the Cobra. Harlan was standing, favouring one leg, looking down at the two men he’d killed. The cocked revolver was still held in one hand, pointing down. Harrelson had the surviving gun-tramp down on his knees, hands clasped behind his head. The huge woman was covering the terrified prisoner with her automatic shotgun. Jonas was leaning against the wall of the docking berth rolling himself a cigarette.

Ravindra backed out from under the Cobra and pushed Ji to the ground behind some crates.

‘Ask him how many of them there were,’ Ravindra shouted to Harrelson. Harrelson gestured at the man with the barrel of the shotgun.

‘Ten and the boy,’ the frightened gun-tramp said. ‘Merkel, three crew, and the six of us.’

‘I’ll check the ship,’ Orla said. ‘Doesn’t hurt to make sure.’

‘I’ll go with you,’ Harrelson said. ‘Jonas, take over.’

Jonas rolled his eyes and pushed himself off the wall to walk over to the prisoner, lighting his cigarette as he did so. Harrelson and Orla headed into the Cobra, weapons at the ready. Ravindra knelt down close to Ji, carbine still sweeping the area, still keeping a look all around. A few moments later Harrelson and Orla gave the all clear. Ravindra sagged and slumped against the wall of the docking berth.

‘Are you okay?’ she asked Ji. He nodded numbly. She looked up at Harlan. He reached into his suit jacket and pulled out a silver hip flask. You had to know what to look for to realise that his hand was shaking.

‘Boss?’ Jonas motioned towards the prisoner. Harlan glanced down at the terrified gun-tramp. He nodded.

‘Sorry, friend.’ Jonas didn’t sound very sorry at all. The beam turned the back of the man’s head to steam.

Orla glanced at the executed gun-tramp as she and Harrelson emerged from the
Magician
. Ravindra pushed herself to her feet.

‘Did you find them?’ she asked Harlan.

‘Did you trace the transmission?’ Harlan asked over his comms link. Someone in the command centre had to have been helping Merkel. Someone had to have told the other captain about the Syndicate’s connection to Ravindra’s score. The confrontation in the control centre had been for their benefit. Ravindra had texted the plan to Harlan before she had gone there. They had hoped to flush them out and lull Merkel into a false sense of security when the traitor told Merkel that Ravindra and Harlan had fallen out. ‘Okay, bring the son-of-a-bitch down to the main concourse. He’ll get his publicly.’

Ravindra walked towards the station boss. She pointed at the ancient revolver he’d used.

‘What was that about?’ she demanded. Harlan held his hands up in mock surrender.

‘I swear to the Lady Fate, girl, I am better with this old Peacemaker than I am with any modern gun.’ It was all bullshit, of course. Just like that stuff about going for a shave. He was as shaken up as the rest of them were after the gunfight, with perhaps the exception of Jonas, but there was something wrong with Jonas. The swordcane, the revolver, it was all just part of the myth of Harlan Whit. A myth that made people less inclined to mess with him. Ravindra hugged him.

‘Thank you,’ she told him. She pulled away from Harlan and nodded at Harrelson and Jonas. Harrelson smiled, Jonas touched his hat. Ravindra walked over to Orla and embraced her.

‘Well, sir,’ Harlan addressed Ji. ‘Ladies,’ he said to Orla and Ravindra. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment for a shave.’ He took another long pull from the hipflask to steady his nerves, then turned and headed for the door. Jonas and Harrelson fell in behind him. Harlan stopped as he passed Ji and glanced at him. ‘You need to be a man now, son.’ And he was gone. Only then did Ravindra turn back to Ji, haul him to his feet, and clasp him so fiercely that it hurt his already pained ribs. Only then did she let her tears flow.

The
Dragon Queen
quietly woke Ziva up in the middle of their artificial night. ‘We have arrived,’ it told her.

‘Take us in-system and start looking for Aisha.’ Ziva turned and tried to go back to sleep. When that didn’t work, she looked intently at En, trying to lose herself in her lover; but for some reason she kept seeing Khanguire. In the end Ziva gave up and floated quietly out of the cabin, back to the cockpit. She started retrieving Khanguire’s files from the
Dragon Queen
’s archives and then stopped herself.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked the air. ‘What
are
you doing?’

She opened the
Dragon Queen
’s cockpit shields and let herself float up against the transparency in the ship’s outer skin. She drifted there. Stars. There were so many. Out here, slightly off the axis of the galaxy where the interstellar dust clouds didn’t obscure as much of the core as they did right on the galactic ecliptic, the Milky Way was dazzling. As bright as Earth’s moon she thought; and then she realised that Aisha had never seen Earth’s moon. The Federation, the Empire, the Alliance, they were all tiny drops in a vast ocean. Space could be magnificently beautiful. Sometimes it literally took her breath away. Riding the gas torrents of the contact binary Phi Persei had made her weep at the sheer grandeur of it. It had taken weeks to get out there, hundreds of light years from the Federation and the Empire, hundreds of light years from the nearest permanent stations. The most spectacular piece of universe she’d ever seen and there was so much more waiting to be found. She could share all of that with En. With Aisha.

‘Ziva Eschel, interstellar tourist guide,’ she muttered with scorn, but there was a lump in her throat as she said it. It wasn’t even as stupid as it sounded. The original Fer-de-Lance design had been a yacht. The pilot and the co-pilot were supposed to keep themselves to themselves – glorified chauffeurs – while the executives and tycoons lounged in their luxury cabins. Stupidly expensive for its size, though, and hardly anyone used a Fer-de-Lance as a yacht any more. It all came down to the power plant. The power plant in the Fer-de-Lance was insane – no other ship had one like it. You could juice a Fer-de-Lance with anti-hydrogen and quadruple its output for a while and it just said ‘thank you very much’ and asked for more. Even when you didn’t juice it, size for size it was the best power plant ever built.

Except for that new Zyfon model …

Khanguire.

Ziva hadn’t heard anything useful from the Sly-Spy she’d left behind. Everything that came back was garbage. She’d obviously been found and spoofed. Not that she was surprised. Khanguire wasn’t the sort to make mistakes. She’d never fall for something so obvious. The
Dragon Queen
carried on monitoring the Sly-Spy anyway, but Ziva wasn't holding her breath for anything useful to come of it.

Let her go. Leave it be. Let her sweat not knowing what’s happening, whether I’m out there, whether in some dark corner of some forgotten system a Fer-de-Lance will come shooting out of the sun spraying the space around her with minelets of anti-matter.
That was the way to handle someone like Khanguire. With the patience of a spider …

Ziva had been telling herself the same things ever since she’d left Whit’s Station. Trying to convince herself.

When a hand touched her shoulder, Ziva almost jumped out of her skin, but it was only En.

‘Don’t you bother to dress when you fly?’ En asked. Dressed in a jumpsuit, En had that slightly distressed look she’d worn ever since they’d left the false gravity of the Golden Gate.

‘I forgot I wasn’t alone here,’ Ziva laughed. ‘You get used to there being no one about to watch you.’ She paused and then frowned. ‘I was thinking just now about the furthest I ever went. Hundreds of light years from the last settled moon. Just … jumping. Never too far to not be able to jump back if I couldn’t skim fuel. I used to try to find places where no one had been before. Of course, you couldn’t really know.’ She laughed. ‘But yes, I didn’t used to bother much about getting dressed on those trips. Look …’ She had the
Dragon Queen
start its series of micro-jumps further in towards Arcturus. ‘Red giant stars have a cruel beauty to them, don’t they? They glower. They’re dying – and they know it. The big ones are the worst, the ones that go supernova and annihilate their own systems. Antares. That one. I always wanted to go to Antares.’

‘Arcturus is too small to end like that,’ said Enaya. ‘See, I
do
know
some
things. Doomed to shrug off its outer layers and then fade as a white dwarf, she fills her system with a reddish-orange light that at sunset turns everything the brown colour of dried blood.’

Ziva chuckled. ‘You’ve been reading the tourist guide.’ And En laughed too.

‘Yes.’

The
Dragon Queen
stopped its micro-jumps and lit up its engines, running them low, a fraction of a gravity as she burned in around the gas giant Kalliste. Its moon, Arcas, core-heated by the tidal effects of its two ill-matched parents, was apparently the place to go for sunsets.

‘I still have that piece of human garbage in the hold,’ muttered Ziva. ‘I have to take him in after this. I can’t keep dragging him from system to system. As it is, he’ll bang on about human rights violations the moment I hand him over to a Federation court.’ But that, thankfully, would be Darkwater’s problem.

Enaya looked horrified. ‘He’s on the ship with us?’

‘He’s in the hold in a self-contained pod. He’s locked inside it and he might as well be in a different ship.’ Ziva squeezed Enaya’s hand. ‘This is more important. Are you all right?’

‘I’m nervous. Angry. Frightened. What do I say to her, Ziv? Do we even know if she’s here?’

‘You tell her that she deserves better.’ Ziva checked through her avatars. Delta Pavonis confirmed Aisha’s passage out and that the shithead boyfriend, Odar Berkeley, was violating a non-transit order. ‘Yes, she’s here, somewhere, and Arcas and Kalliste are where you come if what you want is a morose romantic tragedy of a sunset. You still fine with me breaking his kneecaps when we find them?’

‘Actually, I’d rather you didn’t. Don’t get yourself in trouble over him, Ziv.’

‘But I
want
to hurt him, En.’

‘I just want him to go away. Ay’s mine, Ziv, not yours. Leave her to me. Please?’

‘Got them!’ They weren’t even trying to hide. They were out on their own in a backwater, in a cheap automated drone-run retreat, with a bottom-rust rental aerojet that probably hadn’t seen a proper service for a decade. En shook her head. Right out into the middle of nowhere, as far as it was possible to go.

‘You know Ay. No half-measures. She came here to drown herself in a dying star. If she had the money, she’d be on a cruise flirting with the edges of the chromosphere.’

‘I’ll take you both once we’re done here. Strap yourself in.’ Ziva dressed, dropped the
Dragon Queen
into a trajectory for atmospheric entry and then changed her mind and did one more low fast orbit of Arcas, this time scanning all the traffic she passed. Sure enough she caught that corvette, the one that had followed her from Whit’s Station, just moving in at the edge of her sensor range.
Keep an eye on him
, she told the
Dragon Queen;
then she buckled up and dropped into the stratosphere and for a while they were blind, haloed by over-shocked plasma as the Fer-de-Lance smashed Arcas’s atmosphere out of the way. As soon as she could, Ziva threw out avatars into the net, loaded them with hijack-ware and set them to infecting every camera she could find near Aisha, until neither she nor Odar would be able to so much as fart without Ziva knowing. Whatever this retreat was, they had the place to themselves. Not another sentient lifeform for a hundred miles at least. Almost made it too easy.

‘What are you doing?’ En asked. Ziva kept her talking through the ten rattling minutes it took the
Dragon Queen
to crash through Arcas’s atmosphere and drop into subsonic flight. Talking about the good times, the things they’d done together, the days back at the start when Aisha had been eleven years old. Aisha, with all her questions about hunting bounties and her big dark wide eyes.

‘I remember she wanted to be a hunter too. It lasted for a year and then boys were all that mattered.’ En frowned. ‘I never knew how to help her with that. What to say. How to guide her. Isn’t that what mothers are supposed to do? Puberty and periods and all that, yes. The emotions, the feelings … But not boys. I never understood boys and I never wanted to. And the emotions, they were different. She knows she doesn't have a real father, that she was conceived ex-utero, but I don't think she understands how completely lost I am there. I was far more confused than she ever was. Or you, for that matter.’