The ship was a Cobra too. It's fuel-scoop gaped, ready to suck up the cannisters of precious Shanaskilk fur from the wreckage of the shattered trader.
Alex had other ideas.
Again, Xezaor was ahead of them. Rear-shooting, Alex ducked and darted towards safety, and the pirate weaved a snaking pattern against the star-field behind. Alex targeted a missile-
'Save it if you can…' Elyssia breathed.
'I know,' Alex said. 'But we can afford a replacement…'
'We won't afford the fuel-scoop then,' Elyssia reminded him, and they both laughed. At a time like this, worried about their shopping list!
The space station, and the safety it afforded with its own fighter defences, was too far away. Alex veered sharply sunwards, and dropped his forward velocity dramatically. The pursuing ship copied the first movement precisely, but took a few seconds to orientate to the second. It overshot.
Before it knew what was happening it was no longer the hunter but the hunted.
'Go, Alex, go!' Elyssia shouted, as Alex shot off pulse after pulse of laser fire. The Cobra on the screen ducked and weaved, but Alex was equal to it, hardly thinking, just reacting. The temperature of his forward laser began to rise dangerously. The Cobra ahead of them launched a missile at them and Alex shot it, not even bothering to program the ECM.
Elyssia gasped at the cheek of that, and glanced at the young man in whose hands her life was being so capably held.
A moment later it was all over. The pirate exploded, his screen energy finally exhausted. Alex saw the wink and flash of a jettisoned escape pod and for a second — Remembering the beam of fire that had destroyed his own escape craft, remembering the savage destruction of the Avalonia…
— he was tempted to go in pursuit. His better judgement prevailed. Around them, cargo cannisters tumbled like sycamore seeds.
'And us with no scoop to pick them up!' Elyssia muttered.
Alex grinned. 'We claim two. That's quite a bounty.'
Elyssia looked down at him as he sat and guided the ship towards Xezaor.
'Alex, you're a natural. It's an honour to ride the stars with you.'
No-one had said a word, neither of them commented on it: the fact that this had been Alex's first solo combat'
They had been trading now for three standard months, and their Cobra craft, the Nemesis, was scarcely recognisable as the battered tomb-place of Trader Henry Bell. With new insignia, new welding, new colour and the pods and swellings of the armaments housings, it began to look like a fighter.
Three months a trader. And not for one hour of one day of those months had Alex forgotten the reason behind this way of life. Something-someone disguised as a trader had killed his father, and done its best to kill him.
His father had led a double life, and accordingly to the oldest relic in the Galaxy, had deputised his son to follow in his star path.
Alex Ryder was not about to fail his father in that wish.
There were so many questions, so much grief, so much anger. And for Elyssia too, although the Teorgian woman rarely showed the emotion that Alex sensed was bubbling just below the surface of her cool, wisecracking exterior.
They were facing a task together, a task of growing, of becoming strong.
There would have to be a time of waiting, and both were accepting that time with as much silent patience as they could muster. But it was not easy, not easy for either of them.
And for Alex, with blood on his hands at last… not easy at all…
The skirmish with the two pirate ships had scraped the paint a little, and loosened several hull plates, necessitating a trip to a service satellite where, because of their bounty hunting, the work would almost certainly be performed free of charge. Though this had been Alex's first solo combat, it had not been their first battle. Elyssia would have qualified for
'dangerous' status had she been eligible for a rating. As it was, her rating — on the evidence of the Nemesis's skirmishing — had been assigned to Alex. Now, for the first time, Alex felt he had taken a substantial step towards proving that he genuinely deserved that particular classification.
Still at the astrogation console, he guided the ship to within a thousand kilometres of the surface of the dying world, so close that the planet filled everything in the forward vision screen. At dead slow approach speed he finally looped around and there, slowly spinning before them — a glittering metal cube was the space station, its access bay a wide, rotating mouth.
'Oh for a docking computer…' Alex murmured as he began to match rotation and slowly approached.
'Waste of money…' Elyssia chided. 'If you can't dock without losing your paintwork, you shouldn't be in space.'
Alex was a great flier. But snaking neatly into the reception bay of a Coriolis station was his greatest weakness.
He made it, though, and once inside the vast hanger space, magnetic traction drew the Nemesis slowly to a vacant berth. AutoCom links snaked out and clamped to its hull. Alex watched the bustle in the great, brightly-lit void, the customs ships, the police Vipers, the advertising modules, the repair modules, all moving slowly in the cube-space, touting for business. Elyssia hid in the escape pod as usual. Alex declared his cargo, and received confirmation of his bounty killings, and notification of his bonus: thirty credits!
That exactly covered the cost of a new missile.
When all the check-ins, log-ins and identity verifications had been run, Elyssia emerged from hiding. The escape capsule had been their first priority, and they had bought one second-hand for four hundred credits.
They didn't intend to use it anyway, except to screen off Elyssia's unfortunate and unwelcome origins.
Now began the routine of business. Selling, then deciding where to trade next, and what to buy to take with them.
Trading is very much a hit and miss profession. With certain high demand, high turnover products, a small profit can usually be guaranteed in foodstuffs, textiles, simple machinery, simple luxuries.
But the ship's running costs, and an occasional space skirmish, can soon eat up such profits, making the whole exercise essentially worthless. There is no way of knowing trade prices at other systems. Each planetary state jealously guards its stock-market information, and there are heavy penalties for Faxing the market prices of any item beyond orbit-space.
Prices change, too. Speculators lurk in every system, no matter how poor.
That tonne of frozen bladderlash that would have fetched eight credits a month ago at Ceinzala, against a buying price of three from its homeworld Reorte, will suddenly be worth only two. The demand for bladderlash had not lessened. The speculators made a secret killing, and fixed up the market.
Hit and miss.
Alex and Elyssia had been lucky so far. They had carried Vargorn mind-silk between Rexebe and Inera and doubled their intitial hundred credits. They had ferried the gold-flake scales of Geretean reptiles and only just covered their costs. They had supplied twenty tonnes of sunflower seeds to the grotesque amphibioid inhabitants of Bierle, to whom sunflower seeds were a particular delicacy, only to find that a mass, mind-induced mutation had occurred throughout the entire planetary population, changing their taste buds… The search was now on for the new delicacy to delight the palates of the Bierleans. Lubrication oil had come close, and lavender scented tissue paper. But somewhere there was a real profit to be made. One day. One year.
Moving machinery from high-tech worlds to middle-tech worlds was also unexpectedly profitable, and demand for luxuries was always high on evolving industrial worlds. But on Xezaor the Shanaskilk furs (bought at thirty galactic credits the tonne) were likely to be their best bet yet.
Alex nervously called up the buying price at Xezaor.
He whooped with triumph as he saw that he and Elyssia had tripled their money.
This time, in the hit and miss game, they had hit lucky.
They sold the furs without trouble. Then Alex called up the price list at Xezaor of ship and armaments equipment. The new missile was the standard thirty credits. He ordered one and a small robot scuttled off to fetch the permitted weaponry. Beam lasers were one thousand credits, and the temptation to invest in one was strong. The price of the fuel and cargo scoop which the Nemesis so badly needed was high, at five hundred and twenty-five credits. But the energy bombs cost nearly twice as much!
Of course a fuel scoop could be used for salvage, as well as topping up their fuel banks by sun-skimming, so it was a good investment, even at one hundred credits over the odds.
Alex ordered one. Delivery and fitting would take twenty hours, a standard day. Alex fuelled the ship, next, and stocked up with Xezaorian delicacies.