Free [03] Elite: Docking is Difficult by Gideon Defoe

six years of police academy to work out that it had to contain some very high-end contraband.
That explains the sweating
.
It’s not your irresistible pheromones sending him into a tizz. What an ego on you.
    ‘Okay, Misha, I think you better start at the beginning.’
    Misha yanked anxiously at one of his eyebrows. ‘It was a woman in the bar, after you’d gone. I think I was drunk by that point. She sat down next to me and asked if I wanted to earn a bit of extra money “the easy way”.’
    ‘Can you describe her?’
    Misha shrugged. ‘She was sort of … a stunningly beautiful platinum blonde.’
    ‘She wasn’t
that
beautiful,’ muttered Phoebe.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Nothing, go on.’
    ‘She said it would be really simple. I just had to leave the station, then she’d send me some coordinates, somebody would meet me, I’d hand the thing over, it wouldn’t take more than a few hours. I can’t believe I’ve been such an idiot. How much trouble am I in?’
    ‘It kind of depends what’s in here,’ said Phoebe, tapping the box.
    ‘I’ve ruined my life. I had so much potential,’ Misha sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve. ‘I was going to learn a coding language.’
    Phoebe tried to think of something reassuring to say about first time offences when a light on the astronavigation console started to flicker.
    ‘Should it be doing that?’ she asked.
    Before Misha could reply, some other lights in the spaceship joined in, along with a bunch of alarms, all flashing and wailing like they’d scored Thargoid Madness on a Cliff Ganymede pinball machine. Alerts blared out from the flight computer:
Approaching object. Weapons targeting detected.
Other unwelcome sounding sentences.
    They both swivelled their heads to stare out of the cockpit window, where an ominous silvery speck was getting bigger and bigger.
    ‘Bother,’ said Phoebe, as the speck suddenly fired a spray of yellow plasma bolts, which – eating up the space between them like a hundred eager pac-men – tore into the hull of her empty Viper. They watched it explode soundlessly. The pig transport wobbled in an invisible swell.
That’s going to be a week’s worth of paperwork, right there
, thought Phoebe, as dirty great chunks of her spaceship floated past the window.
    ‘What’s happening? Why is somebody shooting at us?’ said Misha, sounding aggrieved.
    ‘I don’t know what you’ve got mixed up in, but I think it’s safe to say that whatever is in this box isn’t a
fancy
vase
,’ said Phoebe, as the hulk of their assailant’s ship whooshed over the top of them.
    ‘Should we do some sort of evasive manoeuvre?’ said Misha. ‘When this happens in an episode of
Galloping Ganymede!
they usually do an evasive manoeuvre.’
    ‘We’re in a barn full of pigs,’ said Phoebe.
    Phoebe and Misha simultaneously experienced Mixed Emotions. Phoebe’s emotions were mixed because on the one hand she didn’t want to die whilst she had an unused noodle coupon back in her apartment, but on the other hand this was the first exciting thing to happen in her job for as long as she could remember. Misha’s emotions were mixed because on the one hand he didn’t want to die without ever having kissed an actual woman on the mouth, but on the other hand he thought it was a Core Dynamics Federal Corvette that was attacking them, which was notoriously one of the really difficult starships to tick off in the
Gollancz Bumper Book of Space Going Vessels
.
    ‘Look, we’ve got about thirty seconds before it swings by again,’ said Phoebe. ‘Where are the escape pods?’
    ‘Over here,’ Misha pointed to a bulkhead across the cabin. They ran as fast as the magno-boots would let them. Phoebe, getting there first, punched a button on the first pod. An ‘Out of Order’ sign blinked on. Misha looked a bit guilty.
    ‘I haven’t done a health and safety check in a little while.’
    Phoebe tried escape pod number two. Another ‘Out of Order’ sign blinked