[04] Elite: Mostly Harmless Read Free

Caelinus right now. Plus Mervon sent in a fleet of Anacondas two days before I arrived and all they had left was a few bolts of rare silk and a weekend pass to Pog Hobdonia.’
    The engineer looked up from her inventory tab.
    ‘Pog Hobdonia?’
    Angel nodded absently, absorbed now in systematically unclipping her flight suit.
    ‘You went to Pog Hobdonia?’
    Angel stopped and looked at the engineer whose cheeks flushed pink.
    ‘It doesn’t live up to the hype, you know?’
    ‘I know.’
    The engineer blushed harder and went back to her digiwork. She pulled the lever that unwinds the cargo bay ramp and peered inside.
    ‘Nice. Pink.’ She grimaced, scanning the bolt of silk cloth before closing the hatch back up. ‘Value?’
    ‘twelve thousand credits.’
    The engineer raised her eyebrows into a sceptical “m”.  Angel nodded.
    ‘It happens to very rare, and until I sell it I can’t pay for any repairs,’ she tilted her head towards her damaged wing before mumbling almost inaudibly, ‘and any extras like data band aerials.’
    Rachel bit her bottom lip, which was trying to protrude like it used to when they were cadets.
    ‘Fine, so I’ll take the heat again. You just do what you want Angel. You usually do … and who I am I to argue? Your dad equals my boss. I get the dynamic.’
    ‘Hey!’ Angel stopped for real this time and caught the engineer by the elbow. ‘Look, I’m sorry, okay? I’ve had a rubbish trip. Three months at space and all I have to show for it is four hundred metres of pink material and a fading UV-tan. I’m told the cloth is worth enough to fill my hold with iridium twice over, as long as I can find the right buyer, here in Slough. Where life is about digging metal out of rock and serving heavy time; neither of which you want to do dressed in baby-pink silk, for many reasons.’
    Rachel glared at her uncharacteristically.
    ‘I’ll mark the cloth as pending.’
    Angel let go of her elbow and started packing up her bag.
    ‘Well, whatever. If I managed to make a good trade I’ll buy you another aerial, Rachel. But right now I have no clue where I am going to find a buyer, so I am going to find a drink instead.’
    ‘Oh well, you’ll be on familiar territory there at least,’ Rachel said swiping the lighting grid on her tablet before heading out of the airlock, leaving Angel to finish packing up in dark.
    * * *
    Half an hour later Angel was entrenched in her favourite booth at Anna and Roland's Zen Garden, a half-finished Glasgow Hullstripper in front of her. She gazed out at Slough through the observation panels lining the upper wall. The big planet turned lazily through her view. It looked rather beautiful from this distance; a glazed and hazy purple that belied the true nature of the barren, poisonous atmosphere on the surface. Angel took another slug of the poison sitting in front of her and grimaced as it burnt a path down to her empty stomach. What her body really needed right now was a spin and a large bowl of carbs, but her head was in control and it was planning to get as obliterated as possible so that it could forget how screwed she was. She watched as a hyper-gravity pod spun its merry way towards the purple hunk of a planet below. She grimaced again. The passengers would be strapped into their bio-bays contemplating eight hours of torture as they headed down into the Stokes two kilometres below. Down there the gravity was 1.5-g. It was punishing. Hard and heavy, surrounded by rock and metal and the constant banging and clanking of diggers and cutters. To prepare their bodies visitors were spun at 2.5-g all the way down in those pods. Angel shuddered. It was like riding a spinning teacup with an elephant sitting on your chest for eight hours straight.
    She swallowed the last of her Hullstripper and slid the empty glass onto the refill matt. The NFC terminal by the condiment holder beeped and flashed a depressingly low number at her in amber.
    ‘Yeah, I know.’
    She was