[02] Elite: Nemorensis Read Online Free Page A

time in the world to bolt. To max-gee out of range and start pounding out the warpjumps: testing the chaser’s ability to follow, widening the lag in a great, glorious chase across inconceivable space. SixJen herself sat poised to pursue.
    But the
Shattergeist
didn’t move.
    Lex parroted a pointless intake of nonbreath. ‘Are they …?’
    It opened fire.
    Seeping open hotmodded bays which the
The
’s scanners hadn’t even spotted, the so-called pleasure yacht coughed out a bright volley at its tormentor.
    ‘Closer,’ SixJen whispered, feeling something – something so tiny it was barely there – akin to surprise. She was happy to let Lex handle the tweaks this time, more concerned with the show. Determined to be ready, but … yes. Off-balance.
    The runner was
not
supposed to scheme.
    The runner was
not
supposed to plan.
    Still, for all the cocksure precociousness of the
Shattergeist
’s assault, it was about as stupid a move as its pilots could have taken. Flashy, spectacular, heroic – suicidal.
    Element of surprise
.
Unpredictable behaviour
. All well and good, but never quite as effective as a top-spec suite of hyperdestructive nuclear overkill and a ship (a top-spec Cobra Mk. III, say, in gloss black and gold) built like a toxic arrowhead. Hence the merc barely noticing the
Shattergeist
’s whiny little salvo.
    Bit by bit the Cobra stopped spinning. Regained its poise. And yawed like a tilted compass towards its prey.
    SixJen felt something shift along her neck. The fine hairs there, reacting dumbly to an adrenal quickening her mind had long since forgotten how to feel. Whoever he was, however pissy or humiliated or (for all she knew) aroused he might be by the long predictable fight and the short unpredicted lesson in Being Made To Look Like A Rookie, the bounty hunter did the one and only sensible thing he could.
    He fired everything.
    Missiles flew, scratching chalky contrails to fizz and disperse in instants. Cannon flared their weird airless puffs of muzzlelight and lead. A pair of clunky railguns heaved uranium splinters so fast the
The
’s systems couldn’t track them, stabbing so acutely at the
Shattergeist
’s shield that SixJen could see it buck backwards with her naked eye.
    … and because the lunatics in the fugitive craft had so obligingly turned their nose towards the hunter to enable their spasm of return fire, this whole ghastly bombardment, this whole grim curtain of heat and atomic decay, thundered upon the bow of the
Shattergeist
like a cosmic shroud, wrapping and choking its body, erasing its shields in jigsaws of energetic collapse. The fields choked and died long before the barrage was spent, leaving its final stages to tear and gouge directly at the yacht’s armour.
    ‘Multiple direct hits,’ Lex pointlessly announced, bulbous lights tearing and deforming across the scanner. ‘Their shields’re fucked. Main engine’s gone cold. They’re driftwood.’
    Still the self-consuming fireballs. Still the rail-chaff ripping at ablative sheets. The
Shattergeist
dervished and puked chaff with every strike, and SixJen made a conscious effort not to grind her teeth. Not to reach for the controls.
    Don’t kill them
, she willed.
Don’t you kill them, you shit. Not yet.
    They’re mine.
    In all of this SixJen the killer was trusting, and worse still risking
everything
in that trust, that her impressions of the nameless merc were accurate; that in all his swagger and bombast he wouldn’t simply vaporize his targets. That he’d be content with first crippling them … with stealing closer to gloat. And that, if he had even the slightest sense, he’d already spotted the value of the
Shattergeist
and its upgrades and was at this moment, like any smart businessman, smelling the money …
    She couldn’t take them both. Not at the same time. But one weakened enemy after another?
    That
was the game.
Those
were the odds.
    The storm faded at last. A few diaphanous webs of chemical fire lingered