[04] Elite: Mostly Harmless Read Free Page B

interior of the space station leaving the empty chair spinning in her wake.
     

 
     
    Chapter 2
     
    The first thing she became aware of was her tongue. It felt alien and dry; too big for her mouth. She sucked on it noisily and pried her eyes open, squinting into the dark trying to figure out where she was.
    ‘Lights on,’ she croaked, somewhat relieved when her timid eyes were assaulted by violent fluorescence. At least she had made it to somewhere that recognised her voice before collapsing last night.
    ‘Lights fifty percent,’ she groaned and the room dimmed to a less-challenging ambience. She raised herself gingerly into a seated position and went back to prying her eyes open.
    Her subsidised pilot’s lodgings were compact and functional, for which she felt extremely grateful as she swung her feet over the side of her narrow gel bunk and popped the lid of the cold box with an outstretched toe. She reached down, wincing as her forehead throbbed, then pulled out a pouch of water and twisted off the cap. Drinking deeply her tongue tingled as her brain continued to thump behind her eyebrows. She sank back onto the narrow bunk moaning.
    She tried to piece together the details of last night. She had gone to her parents’ quarters; she remembered getting there and helping herself to a large drink as Andrew the compartment boy went to fetch her mother.
    Nothing after that.
    She scanned the room with hopeful eyes just in case she’d managed to rescue her cloth. All she saw were the sparse essentials and stacked lockers typical of subsidised living. Most pilots were away so much they didn’t need extravagant quarters and were used to living in cramped conditions on their vessels anyway. She stretched back over her head and felt for the ID panel, planting her palm across it. The computer beeped.
    ‘You have four messages.’
    ‘Play messages.’
    The first was from The Slough Observers Wellbeing Centre, welcoming her back and offering a discounted rate on their range of anti-atrophy spa packages. The next was from her mother, presumably not long after she’d docked as her voice was bright and breezy, inviting Angel over for supper and reminding her about the reception the following night.
    Angel winced. An Imperial delegation was visiting the space station and she was expected to roll out and play the dutiful daughter, to be sneered at by puffed up politicians and pompous plutocrats. Then there was Captain Riley, who would be doing more leering than sneering. The thought made her skin curl up at the edges.
    The third message was Roland; apparently she’d made it back to the Zen Garden last night and owed him twenty creds for a shelf full of glasses smashed during an animated game of Flat Rabbit. Finally, there was another message from her mother; earlier this morning, this one brief and humourless:
    ‘I hope you’re enjoying your hangover and that you will leave it in the waste pipes with your stinking attitude for tonight’s reception. Andrew is bringing a dress over for you this afternoon. You’d better be wearing it. Seven o’clock at The Overlook. DON’T be late …’  there was a meaningful pause, ‘… or drunk.’
    ‘End of messages.’
    * * *
    Angel slipped onto the huge observation deck and skirted the edge of the growing throng; wealthy patrons, feds and investors, all dressed in their finest and positively glowing to be seen at such an exclusive affair in one of the system’s most decadent venues. She’d taken a shuttle pod over from the space station a couple of hours earlier rather than get caught up in the gravy train of executive shuttles organised for the guests. It had given her the chance to have a swim in one of the spas to wash off the dust and grime of the space station before stiffening her resolve with a Hullstripper or three in the Spinner’s Arms.
    Even though such an ostentatious display of wealth went against Angel’s principles she had to admit the view from the Overlook’s