Ellie Quin Episode 5: A Girl Reborn Read Online Free PDF

rounded. ‘She scares me.’
    ‘She scares
everyone
, Lenny.’
    One of the marine ship’s ochre-coloured orbital drop ships had gently put down onto a black landing pad ten minutes ago. The dust had settled and they'd patiently been watching it and the multicoloured chequer board of sun-baked landing pads outside, shimmering in the morning sun.
    Councillor Lorna Hayden was taking her time emerging from the craft.
    A passenger tractor was waiting beside the drop ship’s exit ramp, and two lines of marines in ceremonial whites waited to salute her, their regimental flag snapping and fluttering in the dusty morning thermals. Every now and then, Deacon could see their commanding officer giving permission for his men to sip air from the O2 masks dangling around their necks.
    It was the very depiction of ruling arrogance. Inside the drop ship, Councillor Hayden was probably deliberately taking her time finishing a cup of mint tea before she deigned to set foot outside on this grubby world. Meanwhile, outside, her honour guard of marines stood to attention in their smartest uniforms, risking passing out from oxygen starvation and brain damage, or heat stroke, just so they could be ready to salute her when she bothered to emerge.
    What a prize bitch
.
    The sun had risen an our ago, it looked unpleasantly hot out there. Finally, Deacon glimpsed movement at the very top of the exit ramp. Half a dozen men and women in dark, one-strip, form-hugging suits, wearing flip down, sun-reflective eye-huds.
    Her personal security detachment.
    They hustled down to the bottom of the ramp and fanned out, one heading over to the passenger tractor, opening the rear hatch and checking the interior.
    Then two more pairs of legs emerged into the sunlight. A woman and a man both pulling wheelie bags behind them. They looked like a young business couple, smartly, very expensively dressed. Deacon suspected those were her personal secretary and her personal dietician. Finally, behind them, Councillor Hayden emerged.
    ‘Woah,’ gulped Leonard.
    She was wearing a pastel-pink coloured pencil skirt, that hugged her knees impractically together and high heeled ankle boots in the same colour. She wore a more conservative coloured, charcoal, matador jacket with a tapered waist and glistening ribbed carapace shoulder pads. Her trademark long, flowing fox-red hair was, for once, pulled back sensibly into a I’m-here-to-kick-someone's-ass ponytail.
    ‘She's beautiful! She looks like a viddee-star!’
    ‘She’s
vain
, Leonard. Incredibly vain. That's a weakness. She dresses smartly to hide insecurities. A vain and powerful woman, that’s not a good combination, trust me.’
    Leonard turned to look at him. ‘You dress really smart too.’
    ‘That’s entirely different. I’m not vain. I just choose not to look like a pleb.’
    Councillor Hayden took her time taking little steps down the ramp and as the two lines of marines presented arms in one crisp movement she flapped a casual hand of acknowledgement at them before stooping and stepping, reluctantly, into the dark and air conditioner-cool interior of the pad-tractor.
    Her secretary and valet and one of the security men stepped in after her, pulled the door down and the tractor began to rumble across the tarmac towards the port building.
    Deacon sucked in a deep breath.
Here we bloody well go
.
    The sent-ahead word was that Councillor Lorna Hayden wanted an update on the situation from Deacon as soon as she landed on Harpers Reach.
    *
    The room was an interview room used by the immigration officials. One table, two hard orange plastex seats and a CCTV unit that had been left unplugged. (From time to time the officials preferred to interview immigrants with their bare knuckles; particularly Rebornist preachers). Deacon had been instructed by one of her humourless security officers to take a seat in this interview room and wait for her. He’d had enough waiting time to grow tediously familiar with the