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

see because your head is in the way,’ she pointed out.
    ‘Don’t worry, I can. Hang on a moment. It’s coming … hold your hand open … now!’
    Phoebe felt something brush against a glove. She just caught hold of the pig’s leg before it drifted past.
    ‘So I’m holding a pig. Now what?’
    ‘Okay, now we need to get the pig up to this side of the visor, the side opposite to where the box is.’
    There was some more slightly awkward twisting. Phoebe managed to stretch and curse and press the pig up against the domed helmet. ‘Now we just need a strong, focused light source,’ said Misha. ‘How about your eyebrow implant – does that have a torch function?’
    Phoebe activated her brow projector’s torch beam and maxed it out to its highest setting. She pressed her face right up against the inside of the visor, so that she was looking straight at the pig’s backside squashed against the plastiglass.
    ‘Why have I got my face pressed against the backside of this pig?’ asked Phoebe, because it seemed like a reasonable question.
    ‘Wait a moment.’
    A minute ticked by. Phoebe recoiled with a gasp as the pig exploded in a messy, gaseous shower, and they slowly rolled away in the exact opposite direction, towards the box.
    ‘Hooray for Newtonian physics,’ said Misha, feeling momentarily triumphant, as he scooped up the Lenslok on their way past.
    ‘It’s quite pretty really, isn’t it?’ he added, watching the trail of pig innards silently drift past them.
    ‘In a way,’ said Phoebe, dubiously.
    They floated for a while. The tiny shimmering dot that was the space station possibly got a little closer, or possibly got further away; Misha couldn’t really tell. Phoebe’s breath was hot on his face in an alarming sort of way. His nose was pressed up into her ear. A bit of her hair had gotten into his mouth. He tried to blow it out.
    ‘I’m not blowing on your neck – I’ve got some of your hair in my mouth,’ he explained.
    Phoebe didn’t say anything. It seemed to Misha as if she was maybe in a bit of a mood. A warning alert began to flash, accompanied by a gentle dinging noise.
    ‘Warning,’ said the warning alert. ‘Cartridge requires replacing! Oxygen will run out in ten minutes.’
    Phoebe groaned. ‘Of c
ourse
it will.’
    Misha stared guiltily out at the distant stars.
    ‘I’m sorry my hand is sort of touching your boob, by the way,’ he said.
    ‘Don’t worry about it.’
    There was another difficult silence. Misha desperately tried to come up with some interesting conversation.
    ‘So,’ he said eventually, ‘I’ve been thinking of writing a novel.’
    ‘Fucking hell,’ said Phoebe.

Chapter Six
    ‘Misha, you are a great galactic hero to the human race,’ said the Thargoid Queen, waggling her mandibles. ‘In you, and you alone, we truly met our match. But now that my hive-mind legion of Thargoid drones has finally bested you in battle, we cannot let you return to your people, so we are keeping you here in this luxurious zoo enclosure, which has all the mod-cons.’
    ‘Damn you to hell, you insect monsters,’ Misha shouted, rattling the bars of his cage. ‘Damn you to
hell
.’
    The Thargoid Queen laughed a terrible Thargoid laugh, which was the same as a human laugh but with more mucus. Omninutrients gurgled through an organo-processor pipe. Her carapace glistened. She blinked her dozen eyes, which were black and dead, like the eyes of a games journalist or a shark.
    ‘Whilst here in the zoo, you and the female police human will mate vigorously, so that we may better understand your strange, disgusting mammalian biology,’ said the Queen.
    Phoebe stepped into the cage wearing a wispy off-the-shoulder thing, and put a hand on Misha’s cheek.
    ‘Hey, let’s face it, it’s no use trying to resist the Thargoids,’ she said, with a wink. ‘We might as well go along with this.’
    ‘There are also as many chicken buckets as you can eat,’ added the Thargoid Queen.