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

quietly under her breath, unaware her suit mic was picking it up. ‘Jenny,’ Ravindra said quietly. The engineer stopped swearing. Outside the cockpit the stars had come back into view.
    ‘Nothing,’ Orla said.
    ‘Any chance you could have missed it?’
    ‘Was it stealthed?’ Orla asked. Ravindra swore. That meant yes, they could have missed it.
    ‘Is the crate in the hold the payload? The score’ Ravindra asked the Cobra’s pilot.
    ‘Yes,’ the pilot said. She was shaking now, tears leaking out of her eyes.
    ‘What’s in it’ Jenny asked.
    ‘I don’t know. I swear!’ the pilot said.
    ‘Why didn’t Newman take it with him?’ Ravindra demanded.
    ‘I don’t know! Too big?’ the pilot suggested desperately.
    ‘Where’d Newman go?’
    ‘I don’t know! Please!’
    ‘Are you lying?’ Ravindra asked.
    ‘No’ the pilot said miserably.
    ‘I believe you,’ Ravindra said.
    ‘You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?’
    Ravindra pulled the trigger on the pistol. Twice. The frangible bullets disintegrated in the pilot’s skull, but only a little bit of her head spattered against the Cobra’s cockpit. The pilot slumped forwards.
    ‘Sorry,’ Ravindra said as smoke curled out of the burst pistol’s barrel. She closed her eyes, allowing herself a moment, though she knew how sloppy she was being. Harnack was gone. She had known him for the better part of twenty years. He had taught all of them how to fight. It had been him and Marvin that had looked out for them all in the Warren. One second he had been there and the next he was dead. She had to blink back the tears. She swallowed hard.
    ‘We need to search the rest of the ship,’ she told Jenny. ‘Orla, can you get grapples on this piece of crap, get it to stop spinning?’
    Ravindra and Jenny were back on the
Song of Stone
. They had searched the Cobra thoroughly but they hadn’t found Newman. They had brought the cargo on-board. As far as they could tell it was the payload, but it was armoured and shielded against scans. It also looked as if any attempt to open it without the correct codes would result in the destruction of the box’s contents. This suited Ravindra. It was best not to know the Judas Syndicate’s business.
    Jenny and Ravindra had looked after their own wounds. It was mainly blistering from first and second degree burns and lots of bruising. Ravindra would need to get her tooth capped at some point.
    Orla had gone over the
Song
’s sensor logs. She had found enough tells to suggest a stealthed pod ejection, possibly during the missile impact. Ravindra had wanted to be angry with her first mate, but frankly, even if they had detected the pod, they would have been hard put to scratch it with the military laser. Little short of an energy bomb could hurt escape pods.
    They had brought Harnack’s body on board, put it in a body bag and strapped it to one of the shelves in the cargo bay. Jonty had watched all this not saying a word, his face an expressionless mask. It was all in his eyes. Fury. Jenny had wept. Orla had held her but there had been tears in her own eyes.
    They were sitting on the bridge again. They had destroyed the Cobra to leave as little trace as possible and then put several random jumps between themselves and the ice asteroid. They were in the middle of nowhere. Space had a lot of that.
    Ravindra had turned her pilot’s chair around and was looking at her remaining crew. She wanted to apologise to them, but every choice they had made they had agreed upon and she couldn’t risk appearing weak now. She would cry for Harnack when she was on her own. A bottle of brandy would be company enough.
    ‘Well?’ she asked.
    ‘
We
attacked
him
,’ Jenny said. There was just the slightest hint of accusation in her voice. Ravindra thought back, running through what had happened. It had seemed obvious that he was going to turn on them – the snipers, the insistence on meeting on the asteroid when the payment could have just