[01] Elite: Wanted by Gavin Deas Page A

beam lasers. Dim red emergency backups switched on at once. The elevator shuddered. The intercom went dead and then something deep within the metal spindle snapped as the lasers cut it apart. The fake gravity of the station’s rotation vanished and the elevator, floating free in space now, shot sideways straight at the station rim and then lurched as a sleek dark shape flickered past so close that Ziva flinched. The
Dragon Queen
. The ship had cut the elevator right out of the Black Mausoleum.
    Gravity came back hard. Ziva slammed in a heap into the elevator wall, which had taken over as the floor, then toppled and tumbled as the
Dragon Queen
’s fuel scoop reeled her in like just any other cargo container. ‘Careful,’ she howled. ‘Remember I’m not in an escape pod or acceleration couch here!’ Unprotected as she was, the
Dragon Queen
could easily kill her with the scoop, with the sheer force of snatching her up.
    Everywhere outside was full of bright light like fireworks now, the
Dragon Queen
dispensing cloud after cloud of countermeasures, aerosols and flares, while the station opened up with a handful of ancient pulse lasers. As soon as the ship had her inside, the
Dragon Queen
flooded the hold with air and burned open the elevator doors.
    ‘Tactical,’ snapped Ziva, launching herself for the cockpit, wincing at the sting in her shoulder. She’d have more bruises than she cared to count from this.
    ‘The Black Mausoleum is firing on us from increasing range and poses no threat. Several pursuit ships have launched but will not be able to draw sufficiently close to engage us as long as you are within an approved acceleration cocoon within the next thirty-seven seconds.’
    ‘Where’s the
Unkindness
?’
    ‘We’re following. What shall I do with our new cargo?’
    ‘Dump it.’ The weight would slow them – not much but it all counted.
    She reached the Fer-de-Lance’s cockpit and strapped herself into the pilot’s cocoon. As soon as she did, the ship’s engines ignited and five gravities of acceleration slammed into the back of her. The cocoon was already jabbing her with its needles, dosing her up for the harder accelerations to come, flooding her with repair nanites.
    A bounty notice flashed up. Someone from the Black Mausoleum had put two thousand credits on her head. There was an irony in that. She considered paying it off from what she’d get for bringing in Newman – thirty five thousand credits now, if he really was one of the pilots Darkwater were after. One the other hand, maybe the Judas Syndicate could just go fuck themselves. People like them didn’t raise bounties – they put a price on your head and paid the first assassin to claim it.
    The
Unkindness
was micro-jumping now, racing off to the inner edge of the Kuiper belt. The
Dragon Queen
set after it, burning hydrogen as only a Fer-de-Lance could. She didn’t quite catch him before the Adder jumped.
    ‘Follow him!’ The Fer-de-Lance hit Newman’s departure point sixty seconds later; his hyperspace trail was still pristine fresh. Child’s play. Ziva felt the momentary tremor of the
Dragon Queen
’s jump-drive and then the stars stretched into lines.
    The jump was a short one. As soon as she emerged back into real space, Ziva had alarms sounding all over the cockpit. Mines. The fucker had left mines for her and the
Dragon Queen
’s two point defence pulse lasers were already in overdrive, firing constantly. The nearest mines had already spotted her and fragmented into a storm of tiny darts. She took a moment – just that and nothing more – to see where she was. They’d emerged in the outer fringes of an unclaimed system with no name, just a designation, and the
Unkindness
was less than a hundred thousand kilometres ahead of her, streaking for a Neptunian gas giant with a vast and complex string of rings and moons. Ziva snapped a pair of missiles off after the Adder; then she flipped the
Dragon Queen
so she hit the minefield