[04] Elite: Mostly Harmless (6 page)

But rock wasn’t what she would be hauling today. Her hold would be packed with a dangerous load of precious metal that she would be dragging right through the heart of LHS 3443. This made her very nervous.

Still,
she thought,
at least I’ll be part of a convoy accompanied by heavily fortified fighters.
After making four good jumps she could deliver the payload and collect her creds, and after a few more repairs and some long overdue upgrades she might even have enough left over to keep going for a couple of jumps; just pick a direction and flit a couple more light years further out, see where her sensors took her.

‘You’re looking very pleased with yourself.’

It was Jeremy Kram, leaning on the control room hatch puffing on an atom-pipe.

Angel wrinkled her nose.

‘Haven’t you managed to quit that ridiculous habit yet? You must be the only person this side of Lave still sucking on one of those things.’

He sucked on it a couple more times, blowing a puff of the odourless vapour it produced in her direction. Angel recoiled, disgusted.

‘Don’t you care about your health?’

‘Apparently it’s not as bad for your health as an afternoon with you.’

Angel was confused for a moment and then remembered her battered face.

‘Yeah, well I haven’t got time for your crapola today; I have a job. Excuse me.’

The cocky pilot in the doorway barely moved as she went to squeeze past him. He smelt of cheap aftershave and garlic.

‘Well you’d better make time for me. I’m your escort.’

Angel stopped dead. There were two things about that statement she didn’t like.

Number one, Jeremy Kram? He was a nice enough guy; boyish charm; inappropriate sense of humour; really stupid vapour-habit. He was even quite a zippy pilot when he could hold on to the tail end. They had graduated from the academy together – Angel, Jeremy and Rachel – three years ago. Not a bad flyer, but as far as weapons control went he couldn’t hit a space dredger with a dumbfire at twenty paces.

The second thing about the statement that bothered her was more fundamental though.

‘Escort?’

Angel was glaring at him from just six inches away in the doorway.

‘What do you mean,
escort
?’

Kram smirked.

‘You see, that’s what alcohol and bar fights do to your brain? Have you already forgotten what an escort is?’

Angel pushed all the way past, brushing him off.

‘I know full-well what an escort is. What I
don’t
know is when my cargo train and heavily armed convoy turned into an idiot with a pulse shooter.’

She burst into the control room to find Rachel Hanandroo on duty. She was busy tapping away on the vast console spread across the desk to bring a Fer-de-Lance back up on the launch deck. Angel glanced out into the expanse of the space port through the control room window. She saw her own Cobra sitting out on the platform with a couple of maintenance droids busying themselves around her portside wing.

As well as the ‘Lance there was a beaten up looking Anaconda still smoking from battle, and a single blunt-nosed Federation-style Eagle berthed up beside her. She shook her head, running her eyes over its less than impressive armaments. A couple of beam lasers, two medium hardpoint cannons and a missile launcher. If they came across anything even vaguely prepared to do battle they were toast.

‘Rachel, where is my convoy?’

‘Convoy?’ The engineer ran her finger across the manifest on her tablet. ‘I have you and Tailspin heading off for Mervon in LHS 3439 in two hours; Paul Martin is running a short haul of granite slag to the dump yard at three, and there’s a stag party organised by Guy Clark Adventures going out on some souped up Shao-shuttles when they’ve sobered up enough to find the space port. Nothing else due in or out today.’ She looked at Angel, confused. ‘What are you carrying?’

At that moment the comms board beeped demandingly and Rachel flicked the channel open.

‘Consignment for Commander Rose,’ the voice crackled through the intercom.

‘Oh, never mind. I’ll see for myself.’

She thumbed a button to let the delivery runner into the loading tunnel clamped on to the Cobra’s belly and initiated the scanners. A red meshwork graphic scribed the composition of the container load across the flat screen in front of her. Rachel’s eyes widened.

‘Gold?’

‘Exactly. Hence my interest in a convoy. Do you really expect me to jump into the middle of LHS 3443 with a bellyful of gold and this space-cake beside me?’

Rachel swiped at her tablet a couple of times, worry creeping across her face.

‘Angel, the convoy for Mervon left yesterday afternoon. You’re more than 18 hours late. Today I only have you and the space-cake leaving Vespa-M4.’

‘Erm, I am actually here you know? With feelings and everything,’ Kram said in a sulky voice from the doorway.

‘Well, there is no way,’ Angel stated bluntly, ignoring him. ‘You can tell them to take their gold back to Mr Corporate Affairs and he can shove it up his nebula.’

Rachel frowned down at her tablet again.

‘How are you going to pay for the repairs? Did you sell the silk?’

Angel winced.

‘Not exactly. Mother gave it away.’

Rachel’s face went white.

‘Oh Angel, nothing? Your rank,’ she looked back at her tab and started tapping away furiously. ‘I’m going to have to bump you two levels. You’ll be right back to square one. You won’t even qualify for your bunk.’

‘Thank you for your frank and observant appraisal. Ship’s morale officer you are not.’

‘Looks like you’re stuck with me,’ Kram had sidled up behind her. ‘Aww, come on, we’ll be fine. The convoy will have dredged the area just ahead of us and you know I can fly my little princess in rings around any chancers that do stumble upon us. Four quick jumps and we both pick up one of the best pay-creds we’ve ever earned.’

Angel looked at Rachel who was still staring at her with dismay.

‘You know what will happen if you can’t settle for the repairs. I have no control over private contractors; those bots are merciless in recovering bad debt.’

Just when Angel thought it couldn’t get any worse, Captain Riley came striding into the control room.

‘Everything alright, ladies?’

‘Err, what about me?’ Kram said.

The naval officer looked him up and down with open disdain before turning back to leer at Angel and Rachel.

‘Like I said, everything alright, ladies?’

Angel felt like she was being circled by Vipers. Her whole body screamed that this was a bad situation she should have nothing to do with, but what choice did she have? Without the credits to pay for the repairs her ship would be pulled apart by corporate salvage bots before being impounded for not being space-worthy when she failed to pay next week’s berthing fees. But worse than that she would have to collect her gear from her Pilot’s Federation quarters and move back in with her parents. She bit her lip and made a very hard but unavoidable decision.

‘Everything is just spacey, thanks. Loading up the hold now and then lady Tailspin and myself will get moving.’

‘Good, good,’ he unclipped a small tablet from his belt and handed it to her. ‘I need your thumb on the contract; it’s pretty standard.’

Angel took the pad and glanced over the tiny scrolling text, not reading it at all.

‘Fine,’ she said, utterly defeated as she placed her thumb in the sig-box.

‘Great!’ The captain pulled what looked like a thin metal manacle out from his inside pocket. ‘Wrist please.’

Angel looked at him.

‘Sorry?’

‘I need your wrist.’

‘Err, why?’ She was backing away from him holding her wrist defensively to her chest.

‘Don’t worry, it’s just insurance. You did read the contract you just signed, didn’t you?’ His smirk told Angel he was fully aware that she had done no such thing.

Angel’s eyes flicked to the bangle.

‘What does it do?’

‘Oh, this thing? It’s mainly a location sensor. It links you to a little programme that keeps an eye on what’s happening around you. It’s a brand new system just out of R&D so you’re actually very privileged. Its job is to protect the interests of the investor and since you are carrying a large chunk of the investor’s interests that means, by de facto, it will be protecting you.’

Angel remained dubious.

‘How?’

The naval captain sighed and started to look impatient.

‘Look it really doesn’t matter. You signed the contract and spent the repair creds, so unless you want to talk about
another
way you might be able to settle your debts…’ his comment was loaded with innuendo and Angel shuddered, forcing her right arm to extend so that he could clip the bangle around her wrist. ‘Good girl,’ he crooned.

He closed the metal band and it clicked decisively shut. Then she heard a whirring sound from outside and a hover-bot glided in, propellers buzzing. It was about the size of a family selection biscuit tin and hovered at head height. Seeing it arrive the captain reached inside his breast pocket and pulled out a small control pad. He punched in a code and the lights on Angel’s wrist clamp flashed red.  The lights on a small panel mounted in the robot’s chest were blinking in a similar way. It hovered a little closer and then the LEDs on both panels flashed in sequence together before all turning green.

‘All set,’ the captain looked at her directly. ‘Meet your new best friend and business partner. DORIS here is programmed to keep an eye on you, stop you from making any stupid mistakes that might put your shipment at risk.’

Angel looked from the hovering biscuit tin to her wrist.

‘DORIS?’

‘Detail Oriented Remote Investment Surveillance bot. It’s chipped with a database of sound financial decisions and programmed to make suggestions about the best course of action based on your current status.’

‘Best from whose perspective?’ Angel was highly suspicious of the whirring computational tin. She’d heard a whisper about this kind of development on the uniweb. Some people had dubbed the technology ‘conscience bots’.

‘Why, from the investor’s perspective of course.’

‘I suppose this is a geo-tag?’ Angel asked, twisting the clamp around her wrist.

‘Clever girl, and don’t even think about tampering with it as I have a personal link to the output and will come after you so hard it will feel like being run over by a meteor. Likewise if you try and leave the bot behind; if it gets more than fifty metres away I come looking for you, and I won’t be amused. Understood?’

This day just gets better and better,
Angel thought, before brushing past both the captain and her escort to get suited up.

‘What do you think?’

The small propellers holding the hover-bot aloft whirred a little faster and it followed her out of the door.

* * *

Angel pulled the keyboard out of its storage slot and tucked it under the flight-desk clamp in front of her, leaning back in the command chair as she checked the ship’s forward display. She looked down at the “H” key, worn to sheen and no longer actually showing the letter “H” at all. Most people used voice-control these days but she’d never fancied that upgrade, even though it wasn't expensive. She preferred to be in physical control of her ship, punching in the co-ordinates she wanted to travel to directly rather than asking it politely to take her somewhere.

‘That mode of interface is outdated and ineffective.’

Angel nearly jumped out of her flight suit at the voice that came out of the whirring bot that had entered the cockpit behind her.

‘So you speak? You scared the living space out of me!’

‘I am fitted with a voice synthesiser and speech recognition circuits to better deliver my analysis and recommendations.’

‘Your analysis?’

‘Based on comparisons from a database of over fifty billion possible scenarios sampled from a cross-section of mainstream trade negotiations and professions, crowd-sourced from across the galaxy since 2566. I am a personal drone programmed to continually analyse your decisions and suggest a better course of action when the data reveals one.’

‘Perfect. So I am saddled with an electronic know-it-all as well as a suicide mission?’

DORIS whirred momentarily.

‘I found no record of a suicide instruction in the contract details. Your interface is obsolete though.’

‘What?’

‘That keyboard contraption that looks like it belongs in a museum. Why have you not upgraded to voice-control?’

Angel glanced at the plastic relic on her dashboard, accumulating dust and grime from years of hauling minerals and rock. There was a certain beautiful irony in the fact that this question was being posed by what seemed likely to be the most annoying collection of computer circuits attached to a voice synthesiser ever invented.

‘No comment.’

The drone whirred as the lights in its processor core flashed.

‘I calculate an eighty-five percent increase in productivity if you upgrade to voice assisted controls. This is an unprecedented amount.’

‘Matched by an equal drop in mental acuity,’ Angel started punching numbers into the keyboard, gritting her teeth.

The drone’s circuits flashed busily.

‘Your assessment of the data does not compute.’

‘I didn’t assess any data. I made an observation; formed an opinion. It’s what we do, us humans. It’s why we are superior to machines,’ Angel turned to the hovering bot and looked at it meaningfully, ‘like you.’

DORIS whirred with an air of indignation.

‘My circuits are capable of processing more than fifty petaflops of instructions per second. Compare that with the average human brain, which can only handle around one hundred and fifty trillion computations and I think it’s clear to everyone who is superior.’

‘Computational volume does not equate to intelligence. And if you keep up the logic-based chat it’s going to drive me mad enough to do something stupid, which is exactly why I didn’t upgrade to voice controls. So you can stick that in your data-sets and compute it, you silicon shithead.’