[02] Elite: Nemorensis Read Online Free PDF Page A

through his spine.
    Unfair
.
    (She might have coughed out a bitter laugh at that, once.)
    A plasma volley to finish cooking his shields: precisely the sort of shock-and-awe bullshit he understood. And then the real business. A fusillade of tungsten-tipped javelins accelerated to near-C inside the
The
’s portly chest: relativistic doombullets that slipped through the Cobra’s skin like needles and erased (not exploded, not shredded, simply
removed
) whatever vital organs they punctured: dragging along all sublimated remnants in their irresistible wake. Weapons pods, chaff-bays, engines, life-support, tac-systems. The Cobra was disarmed, hamstrung, disembowelled and dissected.
    Carved
.
    Spacedeath, the methodical way.
    Still:
credit where due.
The bounty hunter had had the presence of mind to bail, at least. He hung now, an aggravated little maggot, flexing impotently in his RemLok beside the crippled cadaver of his ship. SixJen ignored the pinging of his OhShit-beacons and turned the great pregnant knuckle that was the
The
towards its real prey.
    (Ohhhh, the
The:
the closest she’d ever come to a treasure; an object of pride; a lover.
Lakon Asp, Mk. II
Unpainted. Unbeautiful. No sleek edges, no aquiline affectations, no go-faster stripes or stupid fucking fins. A wide-shouldered bitch with a fabulously unimaginative name which was so elaborately packed with hidden killtech it was worth, at last count, roughly eight times the basic model it was pretending to be. A devil dressed as a tramp.)
    ‘Weapons’re recharged,’ Lex said, anticipating her command. ‘You want me to hail ‘em first?’
    Another tingle on her neck. She felt …
    …
well
: she felt nothing. Naturally. And yet surreally was aware that at this point she should be breathless, should be quivering at the imminence of a decade-overdue climax. The dissonance was dizzying.
    ‘Open a line.’
    This time the audio ruckus from the
Shattergeist
had shifted from screams to laughter: two voices so thoroughly intertwined in sleepy happiness and post-coital self congratulation it was hard to know where one ended and the other began.
    ‘Hey,’ SixJen made out from the fug, ‘hey, there’s …
ha
. There’s spunk all in the life-support.’
    ‘Occupants of the
Shattergeist
,’ she said. ‘I salute you. Please prepare to die.’
    More laughter.
    SixJen sighed. Leaned slightly. Brought her mouth closer to the tiny bud of the
The
’s comms-mic. And said the word.
    No more than a sound, really. Not meant for regular ears. A thing of weird resonance and disturbing echoes.
    The laughter from the
Shattergeist
stopped. SixJen allowed herself a glimmer of satisfaction at that.
She knows
.
    ‘Tee?’ came the man’s voice. ‘Tee, you okay? You look wei—’
    ‘It’s fine.’
Her
.
The runner. The runner’s voice
.
    SixJen closed her eyes. Braced herself.
At last.
    At last!
    She wished, distantly, she could’ve felt some satisfaction in the moment. But then, it didn’t matter much. In just a moment it wouldn’t matter at all.
    She opened her eyes and began to reach for the weapons.
    From the
Shattergeist
the voice said, ‘Let me just … Here. Move your leg, ok? That’s it. Hold on a sec.’
    Something
pinged
.
    ‘Um,’ Lex squawked. ‘Shit.’
    Afterwards, when the
Shattergeist
was gone, when Lex had finished swearing and SixJen had stopped telling him to stop, numbly aware he was simply approximating the emotions she couldn’t feel herself, the full picture achieved dreadful solidity.
    A mist of debris rattled around their ship.
    ‘They have a mag-gun,’ Lex growled.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And scan-breakers.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘They never lost their fucking shield, did they?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Or their engine.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘They pretended.’
    ‘They did.’
    ‘You … you think they clocked us drifting in from the start?’
    ‘I think they clocked us from the start.’
    Lex ‘hmm’ed. Then:
    ‘They shot that prick’s Killkure™, didn’t