Read Online [01] Elite: Wanted by Gavin Deas - Free Book Online Page A

visor crack but not break. She steadied herself, moved the EM carbine until the crosshairs settled on his visor, fired a short burst, adjusted her aim, fired again, adjusted her aim, and fired again. Blood and bits of helmet went flying away from the merc in slow motion in the microgravity. He went windmilling backwards, but his magnetic boots kept him anchored to the deck.
    Jenny had anchored herself to the floor and was firing at the other merc, who was using a small, square crate as cover.
    ‘Brace,’ Orla said over the comms. Ravindra triggered the magnetic application on the griphook pads on her knees and elbows and tried to flatten herself against the roof.
    The missile had been forced to take a circuitous route above and around to hit the Cobra’s main thrusters at the rear of the ship. The impact forced the rear of the craft downwards towards the asteroid. Even attached to the superstructure, Jenny and Ravindra received a thorough battering – both of them would be black and blue, Ravindra had chipped a tooth and felt like passing out. Ravindra, with a pilot’s instincts, was pretty sure that the Cobra was in a spin.
    The other merc was floating free. The impact had torn him off the deck, his magnetic boots notwithstanding. Something about his posture told Ravindra that his neck was broken.
    ‘Double tap,’ Ravindra told Jenny. The engineer climbed groggily to her feet and advanced, firing two bursts of electromagnetically propelled rounds into the last merc’s face through his visor.
    Ravindra kicked off from the ceiling and floated down to the deck. Just as her magnetics attached themselves to the hull there was another impact, this one considerably less hard. Ravindra guessed that the Cobra had spun round and bounced off the asteroid.
    They moved up to the internal door.
    ‘Is that the payload?’ Jenny asked, meaning the square crate. It seemed likely. It was the only thing in the cargo bay. The door was closed and locked. Jenny sent an override signal through her suit’s comms and the door slid open. Ravindra stepped into the interior of the Cobra checking all around her, the EM carbine’s barrel moving where she looked. They were in a narrow stairwell. Bare narrow steps led up, though there was room for crew to pull themselves up in the zero G. She and Jenny moved up the steps and found themselves in the crew quarters. There were eight bunks attached to the floor and the walls, and everything was neatly packed away – necessary in the zero G environment. It was empty, but they could see through into the Cobra’s bridge/cockpit. There was a woman silhouetted in the doorway to the bridge.
    ‘Shit!’ she exclaimed and then disappeared back into the cockpit. Through the transparent front of the cockpit they could see the surface of the asteroid coming into view as the Cobra spun round for another bounce.
    Ravindra clipped the EM carbine to the front of her suit, drew one of her burst pistols and advanced with it held in both hands. The pistol was loaded with frangible rounds and was less likely than the EM Carbine to damage anything important. Jenny was right behind her. The door to the bridge started to slide shut.
    ‘Don’t be stupid!’ Ravindra shouted through her suit’s loudspeaker. The door halted and then slid open. There was another thud as the Cobra’s nose impacted with the asteroid in a slow motion explosion of ice. The Cobra started to spin slowly the other way.
    Ravindra advanced on the cockpit with Jenny following, moving backwards, covering their rear.
    The woman in the cockpit was a little younger than Jenny, dark haired and was wearing a leatherish jacket over a flight suit. She had her hands up and was cringing away from the gun.
    ‘Newman?’ Ravindra demanded.
    ‘He ejected,’ the woman told her. If she was lying, then she was a good actor; she seemed too frightened to lie.
    ‘Orla, did you guys see a pod ejecting?’ Ravindra asked over the comms. Jenny was swearing