Elite: Nemorensis by Spurrier Simon

Author:Spurrier, Simon [Spurrier, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781473201279
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group
Published: 2014-05-14T16:00:00+00:00

‘The merc was in the atmosphere,’ she said, a miniature maybefrown troubling her brow. ‘Just like you said.’ Rain, not proper rain, not back home rain; just an insipid layer of hanging damp, like fog with added gravity, fizzed round her shoulders.

‘S-so?’ Myq was still shaking.

‘Soooo, chances are they were still watching us on the way down. They could’ve killed us up there if they’d wanted, yes? But they chose not to. Why?’

‘I … I don’t …’

She flicked rainwater off a vast overhanging … thing. Probably a leaf. It made a noise like a startled mouse and curled up, turning orange. She grinned hugely.

‘Look, if we’d come down in a niiiiice long straight line – smash, re-entry, swoooosh – they would’ve know exactly where to look. And then we could’ve found out what they had in mind. Would you have preferred that, Myq?’

He sulked. ‘No.’

‘Well then. Little bit of random course adjustment never hurt anyone.’ She flapped a hand around herself – the ship, the rain, the mud, the jungle – and grinned. ‘Isn’t this supernebular?’

She’d touched them down, refusing to let the autopilot handle things personally, just as the Shattergeist’s fuel reserves were honking and spuffling in alarm. Part gliding, part landing, part flying on fumes. What she called a ‘little bit of random course adjustment’ was, more accurately, the most terrifying stratotumble imaginable: crazily shifting course every few seconds, ploughing through cloudbanks, dodging gaseous spore-bird-flopping-whale-whatnots, always lashed by rain, always chased by lightning, always shouting and protesting and shrieking like a child.

At least, he was. She just kept blowing him. Glancing up to tweak the liminals now and then like she knew where she was going. Like (oh NoGod) like she’d planned the whole damn thing.

And yes, thank you, obviously: he’d obediently orgasmed at the point of touchdown. Skull-breaking terror or not.

Pathetic.

She pointed out into the jungle like she owned the place. ‘That outpost’s not far, sweetie. Looked pretty big on the scans. Couple of miles? We’ll get repairs there, don’t you fret.’

She knew it was there before we even started to drop.

‘Hang on, we can’t just—’

‘Walk in the woods! Walk in the woods!’ She disappeared into the tangle of (don’t look too close) undergrowth, humming to herself.

The worst part, Myq decided, gawping in the silence, the most revolting headache-inducing part of it all, worse than the sweaty pressure of endoclimatisation – the gravity aches, they called it – and the sticky wraparound alien sense-bombardment, worse than the annoying hoot-squawks of distant wildlife and the twitchy responses of the hair-triggered local plants, was this:

She was right.

All that smashing and bashing around on the way down. All that chaos. All that crazed giggling inanity.

Eminently bloody sensible.

Avoiding pursuit.

So why couldn’t she just have told him what she was up to? Why wait until the end? Why couldn’t she trust him enough to … to own up to her scheme?

C’mon, Myquel. He dragged a hand across his upper lip, dangerously close to a schoolboy blub. This isn’t about the crash landing and you know it.

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